Gareth Southgate has made the frank admission that there are players in his current England squad who “do not deserve to be there”, with injuries having opened the door to some who have barely figured his season.

The England manager made his remarks after naming a 26-man squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Slovenia next Thursday and Lithuania three days later which included Fabian Delph and Jesse Lingard. Delph has played 20 minutes of Premier League football for Manchester City and like Lingard is yet to start a league game for his club – although Southgate did not specify to whom he was referring.

England will qualify for the 2018 tournament in Russia if they win their first of the two qualifiers at Wembley, although Southgate estimated that he had as many as 12 players missing through injury or sheer lack of game time. Southgate also revealed that he tried unsuccessfully to talk James Milner out of international retirement when he took over the England job one year ago.

Southgate said: “It's frustrating because the biggest story here is we've got about 12 players missing with injury. It's incredible. If you were to say, 'Am I entirely happy with the squad I've named?' then no, because we've got too many good players missing with injury.