Yahoo Finance Sensible Southgate has turned into Gung-ho Gareth. Now he must gamble again
Until now, about the most adventurous aspect of Gareth Southgate’s eight-year tenure as England manager has been his decision to dispense with the trademark waistcoat.
But at Euro 2024 he has resembled the last of the high rollers – comparatively speaking, at least – by dispensing with the safety-first approach that has characterised his time in charge.
Southgate’s success at previous tournaments has been founded on solidity, whether it was the back three at the 2018 World Cup or the Declan Rice-Kalvin Phillips midfield axis at Euro 2020.
With Phillips and Jordan Henderson out of favour, however, England have dabbled with Trent Alexander-Arnold as a de facto playmaker alongside Rice at Euro 2024.
It is what many of Southgate’s critics wanted: less emphasis on trying to control the game and more on letting England’s most talented individual players off the leash.
In what is likely to be his last tournament in charge, he has gone from Sensible Southgate to Gung-Ho Gareth – even swapping his entire front three during Thursday’s draw with Denmark.
There is something about it of late-era Arsene Wenger, who turned his back on years of frugality by spaffing more than £100m on Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in successive transfer windows.
The problem is that it hasn’t worked. England were unimpressive in beating Serbia by the slimmest of margins and then stank the place out against Denmark.
Alexander-Arnold offered far less penetration than hoped, and very little protection of the back four compared with Phillips or Henderson at tournaments past.
Southgate admitted the ploy had failed by substituting Alexander-Arnold after just 54 minutes against Serbia and later referring to the right-back’s use in midfield as “an experiment”.
Now he faces a headache over what to do for the final Group C game against Slovenia on Tuesday: stick to the safety-first gameplan of old – or twist again.
Either way it will be a gamble, as it will most likely necessitate picking either Conor Gallagher, teenager Kobbie Mainoo or newcomer Adam Wharton next to Rice in a double pivot.
Gallagher is probably the safest pick of the three, with the most international and Premier League experience, and the one who Southgate knows best.
He would bring the energy and aggression of a Phillips or Henderson but has less to offer on the ball and is used to playing further up the pitch than England would perhaps like.
Mainoo is an all-rounder, able to tackle or break down attacks and keen to turn and drive his team up the pitch with a run or an incisive forward pass.
But it may be asking a lot of a player who turned 19 in April, has just four England caps and has only got one full season of first-team football for Manchester United under his belt.
The riskiest selection would be Adam Wharton, the 20-year-old Crystal Palace midfielder who was playing in the second tier until February and has just 24 minutes in an England shirt.
The combative former Blackburn Rovers man is, however, the most stylistically suited to plugging the gap left by Phillips and Henderson if given the surprise nod.
Southgate could yet double down on his carefree approach and use Jude Bellingham alongside Rice, as he did at the last World Cup, in order to move Phil Foden to No10.
An even more leftfield option would be shifting John Stones into midfield and replacing him in defence with Ezri Konsa, Lewis Dunk or Joe Gomez, but that would be a huge roll of the dice.
England’s passage to the last 16 is effectively secure already, but the Slovenia game is their last chance to find a winning formula before Euro 2024 enters the knockout stage.
The extent to which Southgate gambles again may come to define his last days in the job.
