England v South Africa: Sarah Wiegman embraces criticism as she and players focus on 'bigger picture'

Wiegman’s side were 3-0 down inside half an hour against their Euro 2022 final opponents at Wembley on Friday but rallied before eventually losing 4-3.

Preparations are underway for South Africa’s visit to the Coventry Building Society Arena as Wiegman is given another chance to experiment.

Wiegman insists the outside noise does not bother her in friendlies.

“For me it doesn’t matter how fair the criticism is,” she said. “What we look at is what we wanted to do as a team and how we wanted to execute our plan.

“We wanted to high press and didn’t get that right, and against a top-level team like Germany we were exposed and that’s what happens – some things went well and some things didn’t.

“You don’t want to be 3-0 down but how we fought back and got better. This is one step, we got lots of information and we go again (against South Africa) – we go out there to win.

“There is criticism from outside but we know exactly what we’re working on and where want to go to, from the outside it’s a bit too much result related, so what would it have been if it was 4-4? We always get the bigger picture, this is a friendly game.”

Georgia Stanway netted twice for England in the first half on Friday and went on to play the full 90 minutes.

The 25-year-old knows expectation has risen since the Lionesses’ European Championships win two years ago and knows they need to continue to evolve.

She said: “When expectation is continuous, we’re not able to live up to it, it’s inevitable at some point it will plateau and I feel like we’ve been with Sarina for three years and it will get to a point where we can’t continuously win.

“Teams will figure us out and are getting better, they are pushing (all the time).

"As much as teams are evolving, we also have to continue to evolve to get that one up.”