England boss Gareth Southgate faces a defining moment in his bid to win Euro 2024 after being accused by experts of failing to get the best out of his talented side and subjected to furious jeers from frustrated fans.
England arrived in Germany as the bookmakers’ favourites to win the tournament, but they have struggled to live up to the hype in a pair of spluttering performances against Serbia and Denmark.
Southgate’s team were fortunate to escape with a 1-0 win over Serbia after a limp second half display in their Group C opener and they fared even worse in Thursday’s lacklustre 1-1 draw with Denmark.
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Despite taking the lead through Harry Kane’s early goal, England quickly lost their momentum and Morten Hjulmand’s long-range rocket gave Denmark a deserved point.
With so much expected of an England squad packed with world-class players including Jude Bellingham, Kane and Phil Foden, the response to their feeble displays is growing increasingly vitriolic.
Thousands of England supporters in Frankfurt booed Southgate and their team after the final whistle, while former Three Lions stars Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Rio Ferdinand were scathing about the manager’s tactics and team selection.
“I mean, you can think of all sorts of words and expletives if you like, but it was s**t,” he said on The Rest is Football podcast.
Among Lineker’s other brutal calls was that England was “tactically inept”, with a game plan that was, at times, “inexplicable”.
Shearer was also pointed in his criticism of Southgate, saying: “Gareth is not getting the best out of England’s best players.
“It was very poor, it wasn’t good enough. There was no energy, no pace to the game. We got caught too many times on the ball, too many sloppy passes. The players look shattered, there’s no excuse for that.
“It was really really poor and it is concerning, absolutely.”
Southgate’s failure to help Foden reproduce his brilliant form with champions Manchester City — which earned him the Premier League’s Player of the Year award — is a recurring issue with his critics.
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Foden slightly improved against Denmark after being anonymous in the Serbia game, but was still inconsistent on the left flank, with his best performances for City coming in a central role.
Former England defender Rio Ferdinand claimed Southgate is playing Foden and Real Madrid midfielder Bellingham out of position.
“The balance of the team is not allowing the players to reach the levels that they have done for clubs,” he said.
“Foden is out of position and not playing his best, maybe Bellingham would be better playing at number eight. It’s a big concern.”
He added: “At the moment England do not know when to squeeze the pitch, who is going when, the distances between each other. Once you have questions tactically the picture can change in a split second in front of you and you are lost.
“It is baffling and concerning.”
Another big bone of contention with experts was Southgate’s use of right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold as a central midfielder.
Manchester United legend Roy Keane was blunt in his assessment, saying the Liverpool star simply is “not up for it”.
“I thought it was always a huge gamble to play him, a player who doesn’t play [that position] week in, week out for his club. I know people say he drifts in there for Liverpool, but drifting into a position and starting there are different,” Keane said. “He’s come up short in the two games.
“Now it’s not all down to him. You’d probably have to put this on Gareth. It’s a huge gamble throwing a full back into the middle of the park.
“It was a big ask for him and he’s not up to it.”
Writing in The Telegraph, chief sports writer Oliver Brown said that Southgate’s gamble on the use of Alexander-Arnold was indicative of an “identity crisis” within the team.
“Trent Alexander-Arnold has become emblematic of this England side: full of noble intentions, but hopelessly confused in his delivery and ultimately going nowhere very quickly,” Brown wrote.
“The fault lies as much with the manager as the player. This natural right-back’s unease as a central midfielder was painfully evident during this grisliest of draws, begging the question why Gareth Southgate had deployed him there in the first place.”
Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher said that poor performances from Foden and Alexander-Arnold, regardless of Southgate’s involvement, should lead to their axings.
“(They) will have to be sacrificed now. The team’s set-up is not getting the best from them, or their teammates,” he wrote in The Telegraph.
“Introducing Alexander-Arnold into midfield in a major tournament was always a risk. It has not worked.
“Elsewhere in the side, nobody loves watching Foden more than me. But for England to come up with a system that works and complements everyone, he cannot operate in the starting XI with Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane if they are all trying to occupy the same space and positions.”
– ‘We’re not flowing’ –
Southgate did his best to face the criticism head on in an honest post-match press conference after the Denmark match.
He conceded his gamble to use Liverpool right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold as a central midfielder was not a resounding success.
“We know it’s an experiment,” he said. “We don’t have a natural replacement for Kalvin Philips. We’re trying different things and at the moment we’re not flowing as we’d like.
“We have been trying to find a solution in midfield for seven or eight years. If we didn’t have Declan Rice, I don’t know where we would be.”
After pre-tournament injuries to Kane, Bukayo Saka and Manchester United left-back Luke Shaw, the England boss believes his side lack energy and cohesion.
“We have to find a way to get the right balance. We don’t have our best left-back available. That denies you that balance,” Southgate said.
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Often criticised for adopting cautious tactics when his men have taken the lead, Southgate insisted he doesn’t tell England to sit back.
“No. I think we’ve played teams that are quite fluid in back threes and it’s not easy to get pressure on them,” he said.
While Germany and Spain have laid down significant markers at the Euros, insipid England have won just two of their last seven games in all competitions.
After several near-misses in tournaments during his reign, Southgate is concerned England are struggling to cope with the pressure of chasing the nation’s first trophy since the 1966 World Cup.
But despite the gathering storm clouds, his team will still reach the last 16 as group winners if they beat Slovenia on Tuesday.
“We have to stay calm and find good solutions to improve,” Southgate said. “I have to lead the group in the right way and make intelligent decisions so we can be better.”