Phil Neville has said the Arsenal forward Beth Mead has gone from wanting to go to Blackpool on holiday to wanting “to go to the moon”, after he warned her in January that she had one game to prove herself and had to stop being nice.

Mead was named player of the match on Saturday after she provided a pinpoint cross on to the head of Jill Scott for England’s second goal in a 2-0 win against Denmark and took the corner that led to Nikita Parris opening the scoring.

“The penny has dropped,” Neville said. “It’s like: ‘Do you want to go to Blackpool on your holidays or do you want to go to the moon?’ She now wants to go to the moon. Before she was happy to go to Whitley Bay and have fish and chips.”

Having been uncertain of a place in the World Cup squad, Mead is now not knocking on the door of the first team but “inside the door”, Neville said.

“She’s ready to play,” he said. “She wasn’t six months ago. We had very harsh words with her, and she knew it. We had to really tell a few home truths to someone who was probably at a level she was happy with. But we knew she could go a different level.”

Mead said of the phone call that changed things: “He probably didn’t tell you everything he said to me. But sometimes you need that; you get a bit complacent.

“At the time you think: ‘I did all right today, I played six or seven out of 10.’ But actually you want to be playing an eight or nine out of 10. Those are the expectations I have of myself now.

“When Phil rang me and talked to me on the phone it did make me angry because I thought: ‘Why did I not do that myself? Why did I need someone to say it to me?’”

Neville said Mead has become tougher mentally. “She has aggression, she doesn’t give up. She gives one ball away but doesn’t let it matter to her, she goes and gets the next one. Her delivery is as good as anyone in the women’s game in terms of the speed and the way she slaps the ball across.”

After her cross-shot went in against Brazil in February, capping off a strong performance, Neville got the anger he was looking for when he told Mead she would not be playing in the next game at the SheBelieves Cup, against the USA.

“That was the first time she got angry with me,” he said. “When she walked out of the room, I thought: ‘She’s now beginning to be a player.’ She’d scored against Brazil, this unbelievable goal, and she expected to play in the next game. I got her in and said: ‘You’re not playing; be ready to come in’ and she stormed out of the room, angry. And I thought: ‘Job done; she’s ready now.’ When I went out of the room – and she’s the nicest kid ever – I actually went past her smiling and she just went: ‘Shut up. Shut up.’ She knew.”

Having played as a No 9 for much of her career, Mead now operates on the wing for club and country. Neville has played 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 in recent games and believes tactical flexibility will be vital at the World Cup.

“We want the teams watching us to not properly understand what we’re going to do and we want our team to have an understanding of two or three different systems,” he said.

“It’s a great challenge to the players. What I’ve learned is that we get them on the Subbuteo table and it’s: ‘Talk us through it.’ We sit for hours and hours talking through systems and tactics and they want to learn the intricacies of every system.

“So we’ve got a real fluid system, three or four different systems that every single player has an understanding of. They come down to the meetings, bring their little notebooks and write everything down and study everything.”