Former England captain Steven Gerrard has said in the Daily Telegraph that a "culture of fear" resulting from a history of failure is undermining the Three Lions at major tournaments.

England suffered arguably their most humiliating defeat in a major tournament on Monday, losing 2-1 to Iceland in Nice to exit Euro 2016 at the round-of-16 stage.

Roy Hodgson resigned within minutes of the final whistle, insisting at a news conference in Chantilly on Tuesday that England's young squad will recover from the shock defeat in future tournaments under new management.

But Gerrard, who captained England during two disappointing World Cups in 2010 and 2014 as well at Euro 2012, believes the team will not improve as long as the players feel the weight of expectation and past disappointments.

"I do not accept that the problem with English football is the players are not good enough," Gerrard wrote in a column for the Daily Telegraph. "It is the same argument whenever we go out of a major tournament. The players are overrated, and the English Premier League is not as strong as it thinks it is.

"Nonsense. You are telling me we do not have the talent to beat Iceland? That we lost because their players and their league are better than ours?

"We failed so badly on Monday night because of our poor decision-making, an inability to respond to events as they unfolded and because we repeated too many of the mistakes of the past."

England led inside four minutes in Nice when Wayne Rooney converted a penalty won by Raheem Sterling, but goals from Ragnar Sigurdsson and Kolbeinn Sigthorsson turned the tide before half-time in Nice.

For much of the second half England were sluggish and uninspired, rarely threatening to score an equaliser, and Gerrard believes the players were dwelling on the potential fallout from losing to Iceland.

"When England went behind, many of those players will have been thinking of the consequences of defeat as much as what to do to get back in the game," Gerrard added.

"I hate to say it, but your mind drifts to what the coverage is going to be like back home and the level of criticism you are going to get. You cannot stop yourself. 'What if we don't get back into this? What will it be like if we go out here?'

"Panic sets in. The frustration takes over. You freeze and stop doing those things you know you should be. You start forcing the game, making the wrong choices with your passes, shooting from the wrong areas and letting the anxiety prevent you from doing the simple things.

"There is no environment of calm around the national team. There never has been. It is always hysteria. There is a culture of fear within and it has not been addressed."

Many of England's players went into Euro 2016 fresh from excellent seasons at Premier League level, with the Tottenham Hotspur contingent having mounted the club's first genuine title challenge in years.

However, Gerrard says there is far greater pressure for players when representing the Three Lions.

"It is a different level to club football, where if you lose a big game there is usually never too long to get out there and make amends," he added.

"You can refocus quickly. With England, you know your chance is gone for another two years and the criticism will be ferocious. You know the eyes of the world are on you. The pressure is another level."

Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany agrees with Gerrard's assessment, and says he didn't recognise the performances against Iceland as belonging to the players he regularly faces in the Premier League.

"I am shocked," Kompany, an ESPN analyst for Euro 2016, wrote in The Times. "I wasn't expecting that. I thought that England would show their quality against Iceland, but what I saw was an extreme kind of collective failure. Looking from the outside, I honestly can't work out how it happened.

"What I do know is that when people respond by saying the players 'aren't good enough,' they are wrong. I have spent years playing against some of these players.

"You cannot tell me that the Harry Kane you see in the Premier League isn't good enough or that Raheem Sterling, Wayne Rooney, Joe Hart, Daniel Sturridge, Jack Wilshere, Chris Smalling and others 'aren't good enough.'

"These players are so much better than they appeared against Iceland. England had one of the strongest squads at Euro 2016 and yet something happened on Monday, a psychological 'event' to cause them to perform like that. It looked like something got to them."