Gareth Southgate hands Anthony Patterson international boost with recent comments

The England manager concluded that he may need to start selecting from the Championship in future because of what he claims is the decreasing number of English players in the Premier League.

"The numbers are the numbers. They're not going up," said Southgate. "It has been around 32% but that's down from 35% when I took over and 38% in the years before so the graph is clear - there's no argument about that. Twenty-eight per cent has happened in a couple of weekends in the last few weeks."

Southgate added: "I think it won't hit us necessarily in the next 18 months but if there are 66 players each week, it does mean that positionally you have to add in what that means as well.

"I think we've got four left-footed left-backs in the Premier League at the moment so we will have to start looking in the Championship or elsewhere."

The news that Southgate could start looking at the Championship more often for players could be good news for Sunderland stopper Anthony Patterson, who was called up to the U21 set-up earlier this week.

Despite being 22, the Black Cats stopper is eligible to play for The Young Lions as he was young enough when qualifying began for this summer’s European Championships.

Patterson has started all 38 league games for Sunderland this season, leading to reported interest from Premier League clubs such as Leicester and Wolves with rumours of a full England call-up also swirling.