The Road to World Cup 2026 and UEFA Nations League

[Deutsch Wolf]

Lee Carsley's first squad announced at 2pm. Can't see too many surprises being rolled out.

Trippier has retired from England duty.

 

[Tredman]

Yeah I've retired too.

 

[White Wolf]

Surely a case of jumping before he is pushed with Trippier. He's been on a serious decline for about two years now, at least this means we can't revert back to using him. England needs a genuine alternative to Shaw, probably more than one given his fitness. Sounds like no Ben White either. Used to think we were quite well-stocked with full-backs but now seems to be the opposite.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Still loads of RBs tbf

Walker (although I'd be saying bye bye to him as well)
James (if he ever gets fit)
Trent
Livramento
Lewis

Even someone like Walker-Peters wouldn't be a terrible option. Ben Orange can fuck off, he's a massive, massive dickhead.

The pool of LBs is thinner of course, Rico Henry has a serious shout if he can come back from injury as good as he was before.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

 

[1986]

No Toney . Grealish back as is Maguire - not sure why in either case .

 

[Tony Towner]

I wonder if we get a few quid if MGW comes on?

 

[Johnny75]

Gomes is never international class, nowhere near Wharton and we have no creativity in the central midfielders again.

Maguire, Grealish and Bowen shouldn't be in that squad.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Maguire is only replacing Dunk (older and worse) from the Euros squad so I'm ok with that. He shouldn't be leapfrogging back over Guéhi for no reason though.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Is Wharton fit?

Gomes and MGW (I appreciate they're different players) in over Wharton is crazy.

 

[Tony Towner]

Is Wharton fit?

Gomes and MGW (I appreciate they're different players) in over Wharton is crazy.

Yes. He's picking his U21 players, whereas Wharton bypassed that largely and went straight into the main squad. Pretty myopic

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Yes. He's picking his U21 players, whereas Wharton bypassed that largely and went straight into the main squad. Pretty myopic

Awful.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

He's a strange one, Angel Gomes. Always a #10 coming through at United and would have played more if they hadn't dicked around over his contract. But has morphed into a deep-lying playmaker at Lille. Despite making Daniel Podence look like Niall Quinn.

Ultimately it depends what Carsley wants. If he wants the job permanently then the only way he can do that is by winning these games and in a sufficiently convincing fashion to make the FA think that he's the man. And he can only do that by picking the squad that he personally believes in. If he really is just an interim (and he knows that, either out of choice or by being told that whatever you do, you aren't getting it) then he shouldn't be discarding players like Wharton who clearly did enough to get picked in the first place.

 

[big mean bunny]

I feel like Gibbs-White deserves to be there personally. He has been Forest's best player pretty much since he joined them and still seems to be improving. He has done more to earn the place he has than Grealish has for his recall for example.

 

[Sniffer]

He has done more to earn the place he has than Grealish has for his recall for example.

Irish Brummies sticking together?

 

[big mean bunny]

Had completely forgotten he had played for Ireland (Carsley). Will have told this before but I once went for an interview at the FA and tons of the staff and people I was introduced to weren't English, so it's always struck me as odd when being English (which I get Carsley technically is) is viewed as being so important to so many England fans.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

It's no surprise to me at all that "being English" is so important to England fans, given how xenophobic so many of them are.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

That's one that's always particular to the individual - like I doubt John Aldridge ever considered himself remotely Irish until the very second that Jack Charlton phoned him up and asked him if he fancied a game. Whereas Mick McCarthy always considered himself Irish, not English, despite being born and bred in Barnsley.

I think wider England fan aversion to a foreign manager is largely down to perceptions of the Sven and Capello eras. Largely unfair ones in the case of Sven as I'll go into when I write about him in the coming days. Like they* were bad, so every foreign manager will be. Reductive thinking but that's what you get when you ask literally everybody their opinion.

*Capello was, or at least became bad

 

[Tony Towner]

I think I'm correct in saying that none of the other top 5 European nations have ever had a manager who wasn't from that country. It's a terrible indictment with all the benefits we enjoy if we can't employ someone competent who is English or in Carsley's case Englishish. I don't think it's xenophobic to say that

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We're also definitely unique in that club of having no manager from that nation to win the domestic league in over 30 years. It's the consequence of the Premier League being effectively a global competition that happens to be hosted exclusively in England (for now).

Italy is just very insular on the whole when it comes to managers, like AC Milan have just appointed Paulo Fonseca (my one time pick for Wolves manager!) but he's only the 6th foreign boss they've had since Capello took over in 1987 (and two of them were revered former players in Leonardo and Clarence Seedorf). Juventus had Didier Deschamps (again, former player) for one season in 2006/07 but otherwise it's been Italian all the way since the mid 1970s for them.