Southgate says the Three Lions made a lot of simple mistakes against Hungary at the Wembley Stadium.
After putting five past Andorra last Saturday, the Englishmen were tipped to win against Marco Rossi’s men on Tuesday night but that did not go as planned.
Hungary took a shocking lead from the penalty spot inside 24 minutes when defender Luke Shaw was judged to have caught Loic Nego with a high boot, handing the visitors a penalty. Roland Sallai scored from the spot.
England piled pressure and pulled parity on 37 minutes through John Stones but could not get the winner despite the miscellaneous collection of talents at their disposal.
"It was a disappointing performance. Full credit to Hungary, I thought they caused us a tactical problem. We weren't fluid and I didn't think we played at the level we needed to play,” Southgate said after the game.
"It's difficult to pinpoint. We'll go away and think of the balance of the team a little bit, but individually, we can do better as well and we made lots of simple mistakes with the ball.
"I think we have to accept that we dipped below our usual levels. That was a surprise, but it was a night where individually and collectively, we didn't hit the heights we have been… we didn't quite do enough to win the game.
"We didn't create as much as we would have hoped, but we have to give Hungary credit to that. We lost a little bit of positional discipline at times so there's a lot for us to reflect on and work on.
"We wanted to try to get a spark. We'd struggled to create many clear chances and hoped freshness at that stage may have been able to produce that.
"We changed the system because we were a little open in counter-attacks and we had to solidify from that to start with. We hadn't been opening them up with 4-3-3, and so with two 10s and wing-backs we wanted to try to pose them a different problem. But we didn't create any more chances than we had been.
"I thought we were a bit anxious with some of our passing and I thought we were trying to force things a little bit. We needed to simplify our game a little bit and move the ball more quickly at times. Lots that we can go away and feel like we should have been better at."
