England Senior National Team General Discussion Thread

That's a fair point

 

The more you watch Rogers, the more you see why no big club will pay a huge fee for him, and why he's signed a new deal at Villa (and will probably be there for quite a while).

He's a good player who can come up with real moments of quality, but his game is not very deep.

 

Gets motm. Englands midfield options are insane at the moment.

 

Better second half, but still not that great.

 

And in front of Tuchel.

James Garner playing well (again) in front of the watching Thomas Tuchel #AVLEVE. England have strong midfield options but is he worth a look? Garner opens up on his England ambitions in this month’s @FourFourTwo https://t.co/DD6JSWFGVR

— Henry Winter (@henrywinter) January 18, 2026

 

Didn’t seen the game but apparently Garner was lucky to escape a red, surely that wouldn’t have impressed the onlooking Tuchel!

 

I've noticed a number of times recently Henry Winter being described as "revered".
He's a decent writer, but he's no Brian Glanville.

 

Rashford scores for Barcelona.

 

Garner's flexibility must be appealing for TT. playing and winning a whole tournament at RB has to be a feather in the cap.

 

I wonder what Tuchel thinks of Everton doing this. It’s good in one way to see a club embrace their players International ambitions but equally it can cause issues if come March and May all he sledges if Pickford.

 

Garner has had a good season bit curtis jones should really be back in the squad come March, he just fits what Tuchel wants from the midfield extremely well and is simply better than our other options outside the squad.

Possibly there would be room for both if henderson dropped out but it seems unlikely that will happen (hopefully Henderson losing his starting spot may have changed things at least)

 

It would be very harsh if Jones doesn’t get back in. He is starting regularly now again.

 

Two England midfielders - Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson, 23, and Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton, 21 - are on Manchester United’s list of targets for the summer. (Football Insider)

🚨⚒️ Callum Wilson, set to stay at West Ham this month with no plans to part ways at this stage of the window.

Decision made by #WHUFC hierarchy, as @ExWHUEmployee @RoshaneSport report. pic.twitter.com/eKha0YBIIn

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) January 19, 2026

 

Lack of strikers to finish chances and stretch defences is a huge problem. This passing through bloody everything is a hard, hard watch at times.

 

I think a lot of that is the standard they have to reach to be effective. Physical enough to fend of big and now FAST centrebacks, athletic enough to take part in the press with the movement and finishing to not need a strike partner or wingers chucking the ball in the box every chance they get. I think a lot of the players who would have been top strikers are now wingers/wide forwards instead.

 

Agree on this. If you look at who the successful strikers are in the PL at the moment, and they're big guys. Haaland's record probably gives him a bit of a pass against some of this, but then you have Thiago, Calvert-Lewin, Welbeck and Mateta.
You just don't see many Michael Owens, David Villas, Gary Linekers etc.

Teams will adapt, though. Prevelent formations and tactics always evolve as teams look to counter the successful teams. It think that's what we're seeing at the moment, but it will take time to fully manifest.

 

Modern pressing tactics favour defenders, space is suffocated which is what attacking players need to create chances for strikers. Pitches are capped at a maximum size so I don't see a tactical remedy to this issue as it's about the organisation and fitness of players, if anything it will get worse in terms of boring games. I think the obvious thing to get more goals would be a liberalising of the offside rule like the Wenger proposition. United would've beaten City 4-0 at the weekend under such rules for example and @Fireburn47 would be getting a feeling about Mount going to the World Cup instead of Bellingham.

 

Agreed. Although I think there's a bit that can be done tactically, it's just whether there's a will to do it. Teams started aggressively man marking as a response to rigid positional play, and rather than give players significantly more freedom to move, teams have responded by starting to go more direct and rely on set pieces, largely because it's the least risky adaptation.

The less a team moves, the easier they are to man mark, so if you encourage dribbling in central areas, more associative combination play between players (such passing the ball into heavily marked players and allow others to move around them) etc, you be become far harder to man mark.

There are managers around Europe who are trying to move in this direction in some of the smaller leagues and are doing it with a lot of success. Racing Santander in La Liga 2 are the best example, but you can see shades of it in Middlesbrough too. Then at a higher level you've got Kompany and Luis Enrique incorporating aspects of this, same with Spalletti at Juventus. It's just a more high risk style that carriers a far greater risk of getting slapped on the counter attack, so I think we're a long way from seeing this in the Premier League.

Ultimately it might just prove that Arsenal-esque rigid conservatism is more effective than soulful football the majority of the time at the elite level, in which case we may have to start fiddling with the rulebook for the good of the sport's long-term health, as you've alluded to.

 

The will to do it is the key thing. I wonder if we'll see teams start to experiment a bit this year once they feel safe from relegation. We're already seeing teams trying to counter strong set piece approaches by leaving more players on the halfway line.

Boro are an interesting team at the moment. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do once Hellberg has really bedded in. They do have an advantage in the Championship as they've got several midfielders who can play that way at that level. He's also typically playing two strikers, and they are doing a lot of pressing. Combining this with less technically gifted defenders is causing teams problems.

 

Yeah, there's simply not enough incentive for managers to take major risks at big clubs, especially in the Premier League. Any revolution in that direction would probably have to come from elsewhere in Europe.

 

Ghuei has signed for city. Really hope it works out for him. He's as good as dias and gvardiol

 

If Stones can get fit, It may end up being a good thing for England.