This England team is broken. Is there time to fix it?

As the England players met their families in Frankfurt after a dismal draw with Denmark, there was a “tension”, and it wasn’t all to do with the result. Some relatives of squad members feel that Gareth Southgate has made “commitments” to certain players, but is not picking those who deserve it or are in form. It started to seep in afterwards. A concern is growing that Southgate is too wedded to certain senior players. There have been acerbic comments about not wanting to “upset” them.

It should be acknowledged that that perception goes against the huge decisions he made in selecting this squad, where he left many big names out. Some of this is also the natural irritation that comes when a player is left out, and when results are poor. Everything feels different after an encouraging performance. It’s also a risk of letting families in after games in the way England have maturely tried to do.

But that’s also one of the core problems. It is precisely because of this line-up that England don’t look close to anything encouraging. Even Southgate accepted that after the dismal 1-1 draw with Denmark, offering one of those strikingly frank assessments that do tend to serve him in at least disarming some criticism. Temporarily. Southgate himself described it as an “anxious performance”.

“We are falling a bit short and ultimately that is my responsibility. I am the manager. To achieve extraordinary things you have to go through some difficult moments.”

This is one of them, maybe more difficult than Southgate has yet had in a tournament. In his time, England have never looked so dysfunctional.

There have been similar patterns to tournaments, sure. This has already followed the same trend as Euro 2020, where a narrow victory was followed by a drab draw, then against Czechia and Scotland respectively. The 2022 World Cup similarly saw a poor 0-0 draw with the USA in the middle group game. With both of those campaigns, though, it was obvious what could be improved.

That isn’t really the case here. The formation looks ill-fitting and imbalanced. England badly need Luke Shaw back as a left-footed player, and it’s long been true a certain type of midfielder is missing, but there’s more to it than that.

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Southgate’s current choices are compounding those problems. Rather than facilitating or even enhancing the qualities of players, in the way a good tactician does, his setup is currently inhibiting them.

Harry Kane has been made to look slow and cumbersome. Jude Bellingham has too much freedom to do too much. Phil Foden has too little space and does too little. They almost get in each other’s way, rather than actually releasing each other in the way they should.

There is no balance between them, and it remains dubious as to whether that can be developed in the space of two weeks.

Southgate may have got to the point where at least a part of the grumbles in camp is correct. It looks like one star has to be sacrificed for the sake of the team’s fluidity.

Whether he has the insight or will to do it remains to be seen. Many might see the simultaneous withdrawal of all three attackers against Denmark as an indication that it could happen. When the dust settled, however, that looked more like a circumstantial decision rather than a sign of what was to come.

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open image in gallery

“We just felt the whole front line put a lot of work into the game the other day,” Southgate said. “Harry has only had one 90 minutes in the last five or six weeks and it took a lot out of him. We felt that to get speed in that front line and energy to press was important.”

As regards the big question of whether he would make changes for the next game, Southgate was non-committal.

“We need to look clearly,” he said after the game. “We are disappointed with the level of the two performances we have had. We have to analyse that in depth and find some solutions to address the issues we have and over the next couple of days we will spend a lot of time doing that. We know the level has to be higher and can be higher.”

A situation can be seen where Southgate wants to persist with formation but with Luke Shaw on the left. Even then, though, it’s hard to see how that rights the midfield.

England have always missed that ball-player. Trent Alexander-Arnold doesn’t currently have the tactical grounding in midfield. The constant gap between him and Declan Rice was so conspicuous. The only question was why Southgate didn’t abandon the experiment sooner than he did. More eyebrows were raised around the camp when Southgate said afterwards: “We don’t have another player like Kalvin Phillips.”

Adam Wharton now seems an obvious solution, and the manager has already considered putting him in before this tournament. Whatever happens, something has to be reconfigured in the middle.

This is where England are at. The midfield doesn’t work. The attack doesn’t work. They don’t press like they should. Those are all simplistic sentences, but of huge significance.