Mr Constipation Strikes Again

 

Which club do you play for again?

With two Saints players in contention for the England squad in Danny Ings and JWP, it was time to see whether they actually make the expanded 26 man list or not. My gut feeling was that Danny Ings would miss out and that JWP would make the cut.  In the event, Southgate announced a 33 man provisional squad and Danny Ings didn’t even make that. The reason given for this was that Southgate was happy with his strikers in March, when Danny was injured. That reasoning is pure bullshit because Mason Greenwood, who had made the cut, wasn't even in the squad in March.  Ollie Watkins was the "March criteria" beneficiary.  Watkins is this years Tammy Abraham, having scored a whole two more goals than Danny, having played many more games. None out of Ings, Watkins or Greenwood was going to be a starter so they are going to be needed for impact only. If you had to get a goal and there were 10 minutes left, who out of the three would you want the chance to fall to?

And then we move onto James Ward-Prowse. He made the 33 but when it came down to cutting it to 26, he was inexplicably left out as Southgate did what every England manager does. As a Southampton player, you can play in the friendlies and you can play in the qualifiers against teams like San Marino and the like. This is usually because the big club players are miraculously “injured” for the international breaks. When it comes down to actually getting picked for a tournament though when all the big club boys are even half-fit, then you can forget it. Southgate has form for this of course  - he’s had two tournaments now including this one and he sawed-off Ryan Bertrand in 2018 after he started in six of the 10 qualifiers and took a right footed winger as a left back instead, in Ashley Young.  The justification for leaving JWP out was that Southgate went with players who finished higher up the league – another monumental cop-out bullshit explanation.

The make up of the squad on one hand is utterly bizarre with four right backs and only five midfielders – and of those, Mason Mount is more of an attacker and Jordan Henderson has not kicked a ball since February. The four right backs thing is hilarious and Southgate has completely bottled it here. Trent Alexander-Arnold was dropped from the March squad - you remember the March squad, the one that was so important when it came to discarding Danny Ings - and there was a media shit show about the whole thing.  Trent was deemed as unlikely to make 33 but he did and now, having been reported the day before that he wasn’t gonna make the 26, he of course, made that as well. Southgate is blatantly scared of Scouse Media Incorporated that would have followed had he been left out.  Mind you, Carragher’s high pitched whine at 200 decibels would scare me as well.  I've picked my best 26 players he said, hinting that there may well have been scope for a few more right backs.

If you look at the squad as a whole, Southgate appear to be favouring what he calls a 3-4-3 formation but will ultimately be a 7-0-3 formation when we play a decent side. Five at the back, two in midfield and three isolated strikers. Two of his right backs are obviously going to be repurposed as the right-sided central defenders.

There was a twist however, as in the first warm-up game against Austria, Trent Alexander-Arnold injured his thigh and was immediately declared unavailable for the tournament. That meant that we went into the second game against Romania, with a place allegedly up for grabs. Personally, having seen all the sob story about Lingard getting left out of the initial 26 man squad, I was fully expecting him to be named but in the event Lingard was not selected against Romania and JWP, Ben White and Ben Godfrey were, making us all think that it was a possibility for all three of those to still get in the squad.  Southgate hadn't used either friendly to you now, test out a starting XI so hopes were high that he was using the final warm-up for something at least.

In the Romania game, JWP produced an absolute masterclass of a performance with absolutely everything that you would want from a midfield player. Pressing, harrying, winning the ball back, never giving the ball away putting two set pieces on a plate for England strikers to miss and generally putting in a 9 or 10 out of 10 performance. Probably the best performance by any England central midfield player for a long long time.  Was it enough? Was it fuck…. Ben White got chosen.  Was it known by the players before JWP dropped a masterclass?  Probably.

I’ve got nothing against Ben White and I think he’s a really good player but Southgate has chosen him because Harry Maguire is not fit and Tyrone Mings is shite and can’t be trusted. He knew both of these things before announced the 26 but he did it anyway. To make matters worse, he now appears to be favouring a back four despite picking a squad that favours a back five. If he goes with a four then he is only taking four centre backs capable of playing in it - one of them (Maguire) is injured, another one (Coady), primarily plays in a back 3 at club level and another (Mings), as said, is shite. He’s ended up picking a totally unbalanced squad and when given the gift of being able to cure his right back constipation when one of them got injured, he taken the conservative option and tried to correct his defensive squad selection fuck up, rather than the midfield one.

Henderson walked around for 45 minutes against Romania, proving that he isn’t fit and he should not be in the squad and neither should Maguire. Neither are good enough to justify taking them when they are injured and might be able to play later in the tournament. If Tyrone Mings starts, then there won’t be a 'later in the tournament'. Jordan Henderson decided to be the big man against Romania and pull rank and take a penalty and fucking missed it. This tells you everything about his personality. If he was the alleged leader everyone says he is then he would withdraw himself from the tournament because he isn’t fit and he isn’t going to be, bearing in mind he hasn’t played since February. The only way it’s going to happen is if Henderson withdraws himself because Southgate hasn’t got the bollocks to do it.  How the fuck are you going to play in a top-level tournament against the world’s best players when you haven’t played for four months? It’s absolutely absurd. As I said earlier, it’s not as if he’s absolutely indispensable anyway.

JWP joins the long list of ridiculously hard done by players as successive England managers prefer to take injured players (Henderson and Maguire), players out of form (Sterling and Rashford) and big club players (Saka) who won’t play at all. For me, forget the squad, JWP should be starting next to Declan Rice in the England midfield. Forget the set pieces and just look at the overall play. After you’ve done that, remember the set pieces and the fact that they are an absolutely massive thing to have in the armoury. As far as I’m concerned (and I know I’m biased), he deserves a place in the starting 11 and he is the best set piece taker available to England by a long way. He has been left out because Southgate fucked up the original squad because he couldn’t make the tough decisions he’s paid to make with regards to right backs and attacking midfielders and because Southgate is terrified of the media. Ings got pushed out by Greenwood as soon as he scored a couple of goals and the media started bigging up the youngster again.  Jude Bellingham is 17 and looks like a massive talent and as soon as the media started getting on his bandwagon then it was always going to push JWP down the pecking order in the same way.  The captain of Liverpool is always going to be in the squad, even if it’s someone as average and unfit as Henderson and they are ultimately the players who have kept JWP out of the squad. Southgate is not the one in my opinion.  He’s just another England manager who bottles making decisions and picks on reputation and club that they play for.  Prepare for a tournament where England have a fantastic array of attacking talent, on the bench.

There are of course benefits of both JWP and Danny Ings not being in the England squad and that is of course, assuming they are both still Saints players, the new season will see them fresh and up and running quickly. The shame of it is though, the pair of them deserve to be rewarded for the seasons that they have had over the past two years and it’s just a shame for them personally, that they do not get the chance.  I hope England win it – being (virtually) at home, we should go very close but I bet we don’t.  Mr Constipation will see to that.