Chelsea loanees Tammy Abraham and Ruben Loftus-Cheek as well as Liverpool defender Joe Gomez have been handed maiden senior call-ups for friendlies against Germany and Brazil, while Winks has kept his place and Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford could be in line to earn his first England cap.

Winks is widely tipped to play a significant role for England next summer after breaking into the Tottenham team and producing spectacularly assured performances in central midfield against Real Madrid and Manchester United, and Southgate admitted he hopes his youthful squad selection could unearth more players worthy of World Cup consideration.

"One of the reasons for [me] taking the job is the consistency of how we want to play through the teams," Southgate said. "The players we are bringing in now -- the likes of Winks, Gomez, Loftus-Cheek -- they are comfortable with the ball, they are technically good footballers and we have got to be better in possession of the ball than we have in the last few games.

"Are they 100 percent ready? We don't know. Winks, we couldn't have been 100 percent certain about until we gave him a chance. These guys have been among our 'high performers' right through our age-groups, highlighted right the way through. They are now performing in the Premier League and doing well.

"Whether we see the benefit of that in Russia or beyond Russia remains to be seen. But they are players who excite me to work with and I think they excite people when they learn more about them and see what they are capable of."

It has been a spectacular year for England at youth level, with World Cup triumphs at Under-20 and Under-17 level as well as victory in the Euro Under-19 Championship, and Southgate admitted that the wealth of emerging domestic talent could not be more timely.

"I am excited by young English players that are coming through," he added. "I'm excited by [Phil] Foden and [Jadon] Sancho. I'm excited by the players through the age groups that we're seeing. So for me to see those guys is no different to watching the U16s, U17s, U18s, because I can see a different sort of technical player coming through the system.

"As a coach, it's about how soon can we start to put some of those players in [the senior England squad]. Some of that is dictated by game time with their teams. We can't wait for Ruben to have 50 games, or Tammy to have 50 games, or some of the others.

"We're picking from a smaller base. So let's be brave and let's go with some of those guys and give them the opportunity and see what they might be capable of."

Another benefit of bringing younger faces into the England squad is that they are not scarred by previous tournament failures, but Southgate insisted that his more established players would be making a mistake if they allow themselves to forget the humiliation of exiting Euro 2016 to Iceland.

"What I don't think you do is brush the experience under the carpet," he explained. "You have to ask what we can learn from it and what we can take forward and improve. That, for me, should be part of the learning process.

"Normally you go out of a tournament with a change of manager who then loses the opportunity to put into practice what he learns. I was talking to [former England rugby union coach] Stuart Lancaster at some length about this.

"He would have done many, many things differently, but he didn't get the chance to implement what he learned. So the next person comes in and starts from scratch again. Then maybe they don't want to go through what happened in the summer as they want to have a new approach and look at it in a different, more positive way.

"We're looking at it slightly differently. We have spoken about Iceland, their experiences, what it felt like and why they felt like some of those things happened because when we get there again we want to be prepared for it because we've covered it."