Gareth Southgate appears to have settled on his starting line-up for England’s crucial opening World Cup game against Tunisia with a series of key selection dilemmas having been resolved.

Ashley Young is believed to have won the contest with Danny Rose to take his place as the left wing-back, while Jordan Henderson is likely to be selected ahead of Eric Dier as the holding midfielder.

The England manager also seems set to choose Harry Maguire in front of Gary Cahill in his three-man defence for the Group G fixture on Monday.

With just two more training sessions here in Repino before England set off for Volgograd on Sunday, Southgate has continued to work on a 3-5-2 formation, with Marcus Rashford the only player unavailable until now as he nursed what the Football Association described as a “minor knock”.

The forward is, however, expected to take a full part in training on Friday. For the past two days, Rashford has been working on his own in the gym at the team hotel and did not travel to the training ground at Zelenogorsk. He was not expected to start against Tunisia, despite his performance and superb goal against Costa Rica last week.