You can’t really complain with any of the squad with the players available to pick from. We knew we had decent attacking options and pretty limited in defensive areas. These same players did get us to a final 18 months ago so they can’t be that bad, favourable draws or not. Tomori is the most obvious fashionable choice atm, but whenever I’ve seen him for Milan (admittedly UCL games) he’s looked suspect defensively.
Not too many surprises. Phillips is a bit of a risk but since Rice is the only other holding midfielder it makes sense to take him. However he should only be a backup to Rice. I never want to see us with two technically limited defensive minded players making up a midfield 3 again. It should be Rice, Bellingham, Foden as the 3. Foden wasted out wide for me. The second we face anyone with any quality Southgate will go pragmatic and revert to two holding mids though. Always busy thinking about how we can shut the opposition out rather than have the players on the pitch to control the game in the first place. Then again he’s got to a World Cup semi and a euros final so what do I know?
Watched the Man City game last night and thought he looked impressive. He clearly doesn’t fit in there but there’s no doubt he’s one of our better attackers and offers genuine ability to take a full back on. Not sure who else would go in his place?
Beg to differ on Dier. If you compare him to Sanchez, Royale etc then yes ok, but Conte must be pulling his transplanted hair out over the Spurs defenders he has to work with. Dier IMHO has been suspect for a while. I like Dier but he's out of form.
I think a lot of club opinion mentality seeps into the national game. Asking a club manager to switch or drop a player is a very different thing to an international manager, as at least the club players get chance to play/train with each other regularly. Which means that I fully agree with your point that we need to learn to accept more of what we have, rather than saying ‘this player is playing well for a lesser team, he MUST GO’
Do what Ramsey did and pick players who could play in the system he wanted rather than pick players and then try and find a system that suits them.
I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by any of the selections for this one, I think this is quite possibly the least controversial England World Cup selection in my lifetime.
