England vs. Hungary Predictions: Southgate to steer England to narrow win at Molineux

The Nations League finally reaches a hiatus on Tuesday evening with the last raft of fixtures until September. England are playing their fourth game in 10 days, not exactly ideal after a long, hard Premier League season and they badly need a win against Hungary at Molineux, to avoid staying rooted to the foot of the Group A3 table and potential relegation from the top flight. 

We've asked our in-house writer Adam Roberts to preview this one and give us his best two bets for the occasion. 

Whisper it quietly, but there are growing murmurings of discontent on social media and in the national press about the future of Gareth Southgate as England team manager. He has been accused of being tactically naive, overly defensive and lacking a plan B. While this may seem harsh on a man who has taken England to a World Cup semi-final and a first major championship final at Euro2020, make no mistake, the dissatisfaction is spreading and should they finish bottom of their Nations League group and be relegated from the elite level of European football, people will be screaming it from the highest rooftops. 

One perfect way of shutting the naysayers up, or at least putting a sock in it for the mean time, is a comprehensive win over the Hungary team that beat them just 10 days ago, at a sold out Molineux. England need points and quickly, but first they need to solve their lack of goals in this competition. They have scored just one goal in their three matches and that was from the boot of Harry Kane from the penalty spot in Munich. Southgate is expected to recall his star striker, after he was rested for Tammy Abraham against Italy. Jordan Pickford will likely return too and there may be other changes for Mount, Rice and Maguire, who have played all three group games thus far.

Hungary followed up that magnificent win over England with a loss to Italy and a draw at home to Germany, in a game they probably should have won. The Italian Marco Rossi has the Magyars playing some great football and they are belying their tag as group whipping boys. One man who they will badly miss however, is man of the match goalkeeper in the home tie against England, Peter Gulacsi, who misses out in Wolverhampton due to suspension. He will likely be replaced by Dénes Dibusz.

My first pick is for England to win and there to be under 2.5 goals in the game. As mentioned earlier, England badly need to win, but are struggling to create goals. They are averaging around five shots on target per game in their Nations League campaign but can't get the ball over the line from open play. Hungary have conceded just a goal a game on average so far and I can see that playing out again here with a narrow, tepid win for the Three Lions. It's 2/1 for them to do so. 

My second selection is a slightly longer shot based around a player from each side. I've taken central midfielder Ádám Nagy to be carded and Harry Kane to have 2+ shots on target. 

26-year-old Nagy plays his football at Serie B club Pisa having joined from Bristol City. Nagy has four yellow cards in the league this year and picked up two more in eight World Cup qualifiers for the national team. Here he will likely be up against the feisty Kalvin Phillips, whilst also tracking back against the rampaging Saka.

Kane needs no introduction and is only three goals away from equalling Wayne Rooney's England national team goals record of 53. Kane was rested against Italy and should be fresh and raring to go here. He managed three shots on target against Germany and one against Hungary in the away leg. He's 8/11 to have at least two more in this one. 

The two bets combined pay a little over 13/2 at bet365.