Forget the noise, Southgate has England perfectly set up for the Euros

If you want to lose faith in humanity, scroll through Twitter when England are playing to sample some of the takes from the armchair managers watching from home. You’ll soon begin to question your own intellect and understanding of football given how vast these nonsensical opinions are.

Indeed, there seems to be a general lack of critical thinking amongst the England fans on Twitter and it’s hard to say exactly why that is the case. Perhaps it’s a mixture of the fervent tribalism in the English game and the inability to acknowledge that a player from a rival club is deserving of an international call-up, alongside a lack of genuine football nous.

Southgate comes under fire

One recurring complaint seems to be that manager Gareth Southgate is far too defensive-minded and wasting the best attacking talent ever to be seen on English shores. As mentioned, a lot of this is hyperbole and not very well thought through. Perhaps the best example was the howls of indignation and uncontrollable rage when it emerged that Southgate hadn’t picked Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, or recently-capped midfielder Jack Grealish.

Once again, Southgate was lambasted online for being unadventurous with his squad selection for the qualifiers when, in actual fact, all three players were injured and unavailable for selection.

As it turns out, Southgate got it spot on as England began their World Cup qualifying campaign with nine points from three games after managing to beat Poland at Wembley.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t

Revealingly, Southgate’s England were so clinical on the night that their odds dropped on winning next year’s World Cup in Qatar. Indeed, as of the 2nd of April, the English are at odds of just 9.00 to triumph in the Middle East next year. Still, there was a deafening din of frustration around the way England were playing, with most people bewildered as to why the Three Lions weren’t a lot more daring in their approach. Never mind 3-4-3, if it’s not Brazil, England should be playing a formation of 0-0-10 against every other opponent. That, in essence, was what one could draw from reading between the lines of the chorus of disapproval on social media.

Whereas, in reality, Poland are a very well-organized team and are 19th in the official Coca-Cola world rankings. Going gung-ho just isn’t an option and a look around the continent at the various results on the same evening will illustrate just as much.

Indeed, it was just 344 miles away from Wembley that North Macedonia beat Germany in Duisburg. Naturally, upsets are part and parcel of football but the point is that, if you’re not prepared or professional against the large majority of European opposition, you can – and often will – get beaten. England have a manager that is conscientious enough to know that, of course, but the irony of his team selection was that it wasn’t to grind out a result against Poland, but rather to give his attacking players license to get forward.

Twitter turns its back on the Yorkshire Pirlo

Kalvin Phillips is one player in particular who gets pelted with mindless abuse from fans every time he puts on England’s new Nike-produced jersey. The Twitterati use his defensive midfield position as the stick to beat him with, despite the 25-year-old carrying out a performance in the role that is as near as you can get to perfection. The online England fans seemingly take great umbrage with the fact that Southgate plays Phillips and Declan Rice in holding roles. Tellingly, Rice used to get the same level of sustained criticism that Phillips now gets despite being a player that Chelsea were preparing to spend in excess of £100 million on.

It really is laughable that a player who is in the middle of a substantial bidding war between the Premier League’s best teams would come under the amount of fire that Rice does. It all goes to show that being an English centre defensive midfielder is truly a thankless task but without them, England would never be able to get forward with the regularity that they do.

Indeed, during the Poland game, Phillips and Rice covered every blade of grass at Wembley in order to press the position and win the ball back for England. Once they had managed to recycle the ball, it was played wide and instantly handed back to Phil Foden or Raheem Sterling to launch yet another wave of attack on the Polish goal.

Thank goodness Gareth Southgate doesn’t listen to the outside noise because, if he did, England would be a lot poorer for it. The 50-year-old has the England team ideally set up to win the Euros this summer but, even if he does, there will still be some who wished he chose to attack more.