Manager Gareth Southgate tells England: Focus on the performance versus Slovenia

To do that, he has told his players to shut out “the noise” which inevitably follows England in major tournaments, the more so when they are well fancied to win it, as they are in Germany this summer.

On Monday, they received the boost of Luke Shaw joining team training after missing three days, but more important is getting one on the field.

Needing momentum, they will want to perform much better than in the 1-0 win over Serbia or the 1-1 draw with Denmark, performances which drew criticism from former England players which has clearly irked some members of the squad.

But with the draw slowly taking shape, winning the group looks a big advantage too.

"The world we live in there will always be external noise but external noise shouldn't affect us,” insisted Southgate.

"What's important is the internal. We're the only ones that can perform on the pitch, the only ones that can work together to get those performances better. Performance is what we're focusing on.

"The results have basically pretty much put us in the next round already, it's now about can we win the group? But of course we want to hit a different level.

"There are some mitigating factors but we're not hiding from anything and we’re not making any excuses, that's not the culture we have.

"We’ve been very clear on how we need to be better and how we need to do that in a different game.

"There' some fundamentals of how we've played over a long period of time that we need to get back to.

"The route forward was pretty simple to highlight, then we’ve got to deliver it and I would expect we would do (on Tuesday).”

Shaw, England's scorer in the last European Championship final, has not played since February because of an ongoing hamstring problem and only made 15 appearances all season, all for Manchester United.

The absence of their only left-footed left-back has unbalanced the team, with Phil Foden given licence to drift in from that side of the forward line. Southgate must decide whether to persevere with, drop or move the best player in last season's Premier League, who is yet to fully translate his Manchester City form to international level in 36 attempts.

England’s four points – the same number they had at the last stage of the past two tournaments, where they won their groups – will almost certainly qualify for the knockouts as the four best of six third-placed teams go through to the last 16.

Win the group and they will face a third-placed team in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday, then if all goes to form, Italy – who they qualified above.

A draw in Tuesday's 8pm kick-off will secure top spot if Denmark fail to beat Serbia.

But if Denmark won and England failed to, they will face hosts Germany in Dortmund on Saturday, with the winners likeliest to face Spain, the best team of the tournament so far, in the next round.

Teams level on points are separated first by their head-to-head record, then goal difference, which decides a three- or four-way tie.