England Senior Team General Discussion Thread

Yeah, Winks needs a move.

Dele Alli in the team. He only turned 25 earlier this year, but it feels like this is the make or break season for him. He's got the talent, and the years left, to still have a big career.

 

How has Skipp played? Just turned on the match

 

Shaky start but he's done OK overall. Not exactly the pass master regista performance we're hoping to see.

 

City were awful today, playing the game at walking pace. It's like they reflected the way Grealish plays, and then as soon as De Bruyne came on into that position and Grealish went wide, City suddenly started to run and move the ball quickly again. If Grealish becomes a top #8 he's going to have to adapt quite a bit.

 

Was told by someone at Barca that Pep got frustrated with Alexis because he never got out of the habit of getting the ball and putting his head down, when he wanted them to immediately look up.
Feels like his main work with Grealish will be getting him out of dwelling on the ball

— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) August 15, 2021

 

He was much better off the ball than on it, though to be fair playing against City is always going to be extra hard to impress in possession, particularly first game up.

 

Also have to factor in that Nuno plays a very negative style and is happy to concede possession to the opposition.

 

Find it slightly strange that Luke Shaw isn’t on that list. I think he had a very good Euro’s and one of our best players if I’m honest.

 

Bit of a daft criterion. He started all of our most important games and has a far stronger shout than someone like DCL.

 

Thought I’d post this article from Oliver Kay of The Athletic here as it has a lot of relevance about our past conversations regarding the much troubled midfield:

Where’s England’s Pirlo?

Andrea Pirlo chooses his words like he used to choose his passes: precisely, accurately and with an acute sense of understanding, authority and gravitas.

He thinks, therefore he plays. He speaks, therefore we should listen.

“In England, there’s never been this kind of player,” the former Italy midfielder told The Athletic this week. “There have been great midfielders over the years with different skills. There’s the boy at Leeds who’s a bit of a regista, but… we’re a bit different. He doesn’t have the same characteristics I had. You’ve always had box-to-box midfielders, like Frank Lampard.”

In truth, it has been a long time since English football has produced a player out of the Lampard, Steven Gerrard or Bryan Robson mould: power, thrusting dynamism and goalscoring threat. Dele Alli and Mason Mount emerged as different types, reflecting the move towards a pressing game rather than the box-to-box style of old. Kalvin Phillips, the aforementioned “boy from Leeds” or occasionally “the Yorkshire Pirlo”, covers every blade of grass but he too reflects a more modern playing style rather than the English archetype.

Pirlo is right, though, when he says English football struggles to produce midfielders with the characteristics he demonstrated as the classic regista — or deep-lying playmaker — during his prime with AC Milan, Juventus and the Italian national team. Nor indeed the characteristics of Marco Verratti or Luka Modric, who are neither regista nor trequartista, but instead combine elements of both in the way they marry possession play with the odd killer pass.

It has long been felt that this is a cultural issue. English football has traditionally been played at a furious pace, favouring brawn over brains, so it is no surprise it has developed players who reflect that style. In his compelling book The Italian Job, published in 2006, Gianluca Vialli went further, proposing that the strong winds in England — and even more so further north in Scotland — frequently makes it impossible to carry out the type of technical, tactical training sessions that are so fundamental to a player’s development in Italy or Spain.

Over time, coaching influences have changed. At grassroots, in academies and certainly at professional level, there is far more emphasis on technical, possession-based football. In the past few years, a new generation of English players has emerged: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mount, Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho, Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe, Mason Greenwood and so many others, all yet to turn 23.

Within the game, it is widely regarded as the most exciting crop of English youngsters in years but there is still something missing when it comes to midfield. Phillips and Declan Rice were among England’s outstanding performers at this summer’s European Championship, but even as Gareth Southgate’s team progressed through the tournament, there was always the nagging concern that they might come unstuck against top-class opponents with the ability to control and dictate the tempo of a game when the stakes were highest.

Some will rush to point out that England lost that Euros final by the smallest of margins: that they were Italy’s equal over the 120 minutes and that there would no be hand-wringing five and a half weeks later, nor indeed at any time in the foreseeable future, had Marcus Rashford, Sancho and Saka shown a little more composure in the decisive penalty shootout.

But the midfield issue has persisted for years.

Even when England had Gerrard, Lampard, David Beckham and Paul Scholes, the concern was about striking the right balance, which no manager ever seemed to achieve for more than a couple of matches. (There has to be a mention here for the player who won five Premier League titles and reached three Champions League finals as a deep-lying midfielder at Manchester Unitedbut made just 34 appearances for England, starting just 22 of those, over a 14-year period. If we are talking about English football’s long-lost regista, it is Michael Carrick.)

Throughout the past decade — from being given the runaround by Pirlo in the Euro 2012 quarter-finals, through the blink-and-you-missed-it 2014 World Cup campaign, the dreadful last-16 disintegration against Iceland at the European Championship two years later and the so-near-yet-so-far experiences against Croatia in the 2018 World Cup semi-final and Italy in this year’s Euros final — midfield has been a concern.

As The Athletic’s Michael Cox writes here, it was predictable that Italy would dominate possession in that final, particularly after England took a second-minute lead through Luke Shaw, but Southgate’s team spent much of the evening clinging on for dear life. “Tackling and blocking and intercepting effectively,” Cox wrote, “but without any sense of a quick shift to a fast break. A lack of a plan or individual failings? A bit of both, perhaps, and Italy short-circuited any concept of an England attacking transition by counter-pressing quickly and winning the ball.”

And this was Southgate’s England trying to play to their strengths, which are all about breaking forward quickly and incisively in wide areas. There were periods when they kept the ball that night, with Rice dropping back to help John Stonesand Harry Maguire, but the type of controlled, progressive possession football produced by the blue-shirted Jorginhoand Verratti never seemed to be a realistic option.

From the 34th to the 74th minute, when Rice was substituted, he and Phillips completed eight and seven passes respectively, as opposed to Jorginho’s 44 and Verratti’s 36. That was the period when England’s grip on the final was loosened severely. Over the remaining 46 minutes of play, Rice’s replacement Jordan Henderson and Phillips completed 13 and 18 passes respectively. Jorginho and Verratti completed 26 and 40 over the same period — and bear in mind here that Verratti was subbed off in the sixth minute of extra time.

There are certainly questions to be asked about strategy and use of resources, but sometimes it is about playing to your strengths.

StatsBomb record data for progressive passes (ie, “completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent’s goal at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any completed pass into the penalty area — excluding passes from the defending 40 per cent of the pitch”).

In last season’s Premier League, the players who scored highest in this category were Liverpool’s Thiago, a Spain international born in Italy to Brazilian parents (8.9 progressive passes per 90 minutes), Croatian Mateo Kovacic of Chelsea (8.2) and Manchester City’s Belgian Kevin De Bruyne (7.8), all of whom could be said to belong to certain types which England don’t have.



Henderson is next on that list (7.7 progressive passes per 90 minutes) but again, like Phillips, he is a midfielder who, despite his undoubted strengths, would never be regarded as a playmaker in the purest sense. Similar can be said of his Liverpool team-mate James Milner (7.5 per 90 minutes), who retired from international football after that Iceland defeat five years ago in any case. Other names in the top 10 include Switzerland’s Granit Xhaka, Brazilian Fernandinho and Portuguese Bruno Fernandes.

Extending this metric to cover La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the German Bundesliga, the standout midfielders are Luis Alberto of Lazio (10 progressive passes per 90 minutes) and Juventus’s Manuel Locatelli (8.3). Unsurprisingly, Paris Saint-Germain’s Verratti is right up there too (8.1), as is Modric (7.2) at Real Madrid. Phillips (3.9) and Rice (2.9) are way down this combined list, which of course reflects different roles in less dominant teams with different playing styles — and in a league where even Thiago has found it tougher to acclimatise than many expected on arrival from Bayern Munich last summer — but it also underlines how unrealistic it is to expect Phillips and Rice to play like Jorginho and Verratti.

One English player who does score highly for progressive passes, though, is Jack Grealish (6.9 per 90 minutes in last season’s Premier League). According to StatsBomb, the then-Aston Villa talisman ranked in the 99th percentile across the five leading European leagues last season for progressive passes, progressive carries and shot-creating actions per 90 minutes. Given that all three of those categories were topped by Lionel Messi, that is rather encouraging.

But there is a simple reason why Grealish doesn’t feature on the list above: he rarely played in midfield last season. Indeed, he has barely done so since the troubled opening weeks of Villa’s 2019-20 post-promotion campaign. Head coach Dean Smith quickly concluded that the best position for Grealish in a team adjusting to life back in the Premier League was an advanced left-sided role in what was usually a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 formation. Looking at Grealish’s output and his contribution to Villa’s progress in the first half of last season, in particular, it is hard to disagree.

That’s why it has been so fascinating to hear Pep Guardiola talking about the possibility of using his new £100 million acquisition in midfield at Manchester City. That would be as a No 8 in the De Bruyne or David Silva mould, rather than a playmaker in the Pirlo/Jorginho/Verratti/Modric/Thiago sense of the word. Trequartista rather than regista? Either would be more than welcome. When it comes to creativity in the middle of the pitch, as opposed to wide positions, English football is not exactly inundated with options.

The frustrating thing is that more creative midfielders, raised in a more European-style coaching environment, have threatened to emerge in England over the past decade or so, but few have come close to living up to their potential.

The most lamented case is that of Jack Wilshere, who was such a wonderful prospect until injuries — seemingly due to being overplayed as a teenager in that 2010-11 breakthrough season at Arsenal, a victim of his own progress — took a heavy toll. At 29, he is now a free agent, released by second-tier Bournemouth at the end of last season to little or no surprise.

Then there is Ravel Morrison, whose ability to handle the professional demands of the game has never come close to matching his outstanding technical and creative qualities. Since leaving West Ham in 2015, former Manchester United prodigy Morrison has travelled from one club to another — including stints in Italy, Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands — without finding any real consistency. At 28, he has just signed for another Championship club, Derby County. Whether it is a new start under former Old Trafford colleague Wayne Rooney or another false dawn remains to be seen.

Josh McEachran excelled in Chelsea’s youth team in a more advanced role before being groomed as a regista by Carlo Ancelotti, who knows one when he sees one, but, for a variety of reasons, his career stagnated and at 28 he is at MK Dons in the English third tier, where he’s begun their last two games on the bench. The two-footed, technically accomplished Lewis Baker is still, remarkably, a Chelsea player at the age of 26 but has been sent out on loan nine times since his solitary four-minute senior appearance for the club in January 2014. Tom Carroll, who attracted rave reviews in the Tottenham Hotspur and England youth teams, has just signed for Ipswich Town, again in League One, at 29.

It is inevitable that there will be exciting prospects who don’t fulfil their early promise. It is a fact of life, particularly in the Premier League, where the financial stakes are so high and every club have the resources to look for ready-made solutions in the transfer market rather than building on homegrown talent. But even so, the lack of progression among so many young English creative-midfield prospects seems startling.

Tom Cleverley has made 215 Premier League appearances for five different clubs by the age of 32 but when you consider he started 18 games in a title-winning season for Manchester United in 2012-13 and briefly looked like becoming a regular in the England team, he is another one to add to the list. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Harry Winks and Dele are young enough to feel they can get back on track with club and country, but all three are 25 now and have lost time to make up. That applies even more to Ross Barkley, who, at 27, cannot afford another lost year but at the time of writing does not even have a squad number at Chelsea.


Winks has 10 England caps but made just nine Premier League starts for Tottenham last season (Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
Every player is a different case — some will be told they were not good enough or not focused enough, or that their body wasn’t up to it even if they had the talent — but there is a recurring theme where gifted, creative midfielders rarely develop in the way their coaches expect them to.

By just about every metric, football in the Premier League is far more technical and possession-based than it was a decade ago, but the demand for energy and physical intensity is as high as it ever was. It probably isn’t a great surprise that homegrown registas are not rolling off the conveyor belt ready-made for the rigours of the Premier League (though incidentally, perhaps the most promising right now, Norwich’s 20-year-old Chelsea loanee Billy Gilmour, is Scottish).

So often, the pattern in these young players’ careers is that they excel as midfielders but, due to the competition for places and the fierce demands of that role in the Premier League, they are encouraged to find their niche elsewhere. That is how it transpired with Grealish at Villa and to an extent how it has happened so far with Mount and Foden, who are usually part of the front three at Chelsea and Manchester City respectively. Guardiola often spoke in the past about grooming Foden to take over from David Silva in City’s midfield, but over the past 18 months he has used the youngster primarily in their forward line, saying, “He can play in every position, but I like him playing close to the box.”

Jose Mourinho converted Lampard into a much more offensively-minded player at Chelsea. Likewise, Rafael Benitez with Gerrard, who he felt lacked the tactical discipline to play a deeper role for his Liverpool side, and, more recently, Mauricio Pochettino with Dele at Tottenham. That is usually the direction of travel for a young English midfielder. To make the opposite journey is rare but not impossible — as Sir Alex Ferguson demonstrated with Scholes, who developed from a forward in his youth-team days to a prolific goalscoring midfielder and, as he matured, a player who learned how to dictate the tempo of a game in the way that, for example, Verratti and Modric do.

All these years later, English football is still crying out for a player who can do that. Not necessarily a regista or a trequartista but something in between: a player who can pass the ball effortlessly and press the opposition relentlessly. It requires intelligence, creativity, vision, precision, energy, tenacity and drive. It is possibly the most demanding role in modern football — and in the Premier League, unsurprisingly, managers tend not to hand that responsibility to youngsters who are learning on the job.

So it will probably keep coming down to how players evolve through their careers.

Eberechi Eze, 23, was usually deployed in a wide role at Crystal Palace by Roy Hodgson last season but is more likely to earn a central role under new manager Patrick Vieira. Curtis Jones, 20, demonstrated his quality in midfield for Liverpool last season but still has plenty to do to nail down a regular starting place. Smith Rowe, who just turned 21, has a real opportunity to do so at Arsenal and it will be intriguing to see whether he settles in a No 10 role or whether he ends up in midfield. James Maddison, 24, has flourished in a freer role since a 2018 move to Leicester City. Again, it will be interesting to see whether he drops deeper as his career progresses. Another fascinating case is Liverpool’s 18-year-old Harvey Elliott, who did so well as a winger on loan to Blackburn Rovers of the Championship last season but is now being used in an advanced midfield role.

Then there are players such as Morgan Gibbs-White, Oliver Skipp, Lewis Bate, James Garner, Tommy Doyle and Anthony Gordon — and surely the most exciting prospect among the teenagers is Jude Bellingham, who made such a spectacular impact as a schoolboy at second division Birmingham City that he joined Borussia Dortmund last summer as a 17-year-old. Bellingham is already a first-team regular there; a hugely accomplished passer and ball-carrier. In terms of that progressive passing metric, his score last season (3.85 per 90 minutes) left room for improvement. After all, he only turned 18 in June.

There is so much potential here, so many gifted young footballers who are adept at recycling the ball and, in many cases, creating. Somewhere in here, surely, is the top-class playmaker English football has craved for so long.

The obvious candidate is Grealish, who at 25 (26 in early September) hopes to be moulded as such by Guardiola, even if it has taken two seasons of outstanding performances in a very different role to create the widespread belief that he is English football’s missing link player. Foden, likewise, is having to develop in a wide position before he — presumably — is encouraged to fulfil his destiny in midfield.

That is the thing. Players evolve. If Foden is described as the “Stockport Iniesta”, it is worth recalling that the Catalan original also often played in a wide attacking role before becoming part of one of the greatest midfield units the game has seen.

As for Pirlo, the ultimate regista, he started at Brescia in the mid-1990s as an advanced playmaker.

Only later did he find his true calling as the man who became synonymous not only with a certain role but with everything that English football is still perceived to lack.

 

It feels like they're doing a rehash of the failed 'just buy a British core' strategy.

 

brilliant article and something nice have often lamented about England

no deep playmakers who can play through pressure which allows things like the euro final to happen

it’s embarrassing really

 

With one or two attacking options unavailable would anyone consider madueke for a callup given his early form

 

Ha ha.

Oh yeah that would totally be just about playing being missing.

 

I doubt it. I would guess U21’s will be his place for the time being as not sure who he would currently get in ahead of? Foden is out, Harvey Barnes in. Also think we’re back down to squads of 23 so it will be even tougher to get in.

 

**Ahem cough** nothing to do with Nigeria *cough*

 

Don’t think it’s squads of 23 mate. But yeah, Barnes or Greenwood seem more likely.

 

Ok, so we’re still on a squad size of 26? I haven’t seen any info on it so just presumed we drop back to 23, my bad. Greenwood slipped my mind also so yeah guess he would take Rashfords place in the squad.

 

Mount was Vitesse player of the year and made the Erdivisie team of the year when he was in Holland but he didn't get a look in for the senior squad. I think Madueke will have to be playing out of his skin and perform at CL level to get in the England seniors whilst playing over there. Unless we start looking to cap tie players.

 

No limit on squad sizes for qualifiers and friendlies - will take as many as we want

 

ok, cheers. Do you know how many players can be named for the matchday squad? That might be an indicator for how many players Southgate picks as he wasn’t a fan of the 26 man squads during the Euro’s due to leaving 3 players in the stand.

 

We selected a 26 man squad for last round of triple fixtures so assume similar again. 23 man matchday squads.