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Published on Sep, 06 2024
Whether this is the beginning of a new era or a brief interregnum remains to be seen, but Saturday's Nations League Group B2 opener away to the Republic of Ireland is a landmark moment for England. For the first time in nearly eight years a manager other than Gareth Southgate will take charge of the Three Lions. Under-21s head coach Lee Carsley will lead England out, so far on an interim basis as the English Football Association mull who will be the right man to take the two-time European runners-up that one step further.
Whether the former Birmingham midfielder is the man for the long term or not remains unclear and could do for some time, perhaps right the way through a Nations League promotion campaign that would conclude in November. Whoever is in charge for those games and the World Cup qualifiers that follow one thing is apparent from Carsley's first squad, this is a time of flux for one of the international game's top contenders. Here are five players with a case to make in the coming weeks and months.
Less than two years out from their trip to North America -- assuming no catastrophes in qualifying -- England's situation is relatively straightforward. The talent is mostly there and there is little reason to believe that it will collectively fall off a cliff before the summer of 2026. What Carsley and his possible successor need to puzzle out is how it all fits together. Nowhere is that challenge more profound than Trent Alexander-Arnold.
It was easy to see why Southgate was inclined to plug in the second best right back in the world, Kyle Walker, and play. The Manchester City man could do whatever role was required of him and if his fitness and form hold over two more gruelling seasons he might still be the best answer whenever the draw throws up a Kylian Mbappe. In having Walker at the top of his depth chart, however, Southgate never quite managed to exploit the talents of the best right back in the world.
Injuries have not helped, but you have to go back to November 2019 for the last time Alexander-Arnold started a competitive match for England on the right side of a back four. Whether Southgate's attempts to shoehorn the Liverpool man into the engine room reflected a skepticism over the player's defensive qualities, the manager's own conservatism or just a glowing view of Walker is ultimately redundant. England's Euro 2024 midfield didn't work with Alexander-Arnold in it and for the time being he will not be going back there.
"I think, for me, for this camp especially, he'll be a right-back playing in defense," said Carsley. "At some point I imagine we'll see Trent arriving into that kind of [midfield] area, but I see him as a right-back."
Trent Alexander-Arnold's action bins in Premier League seasons TruMedia
Those comments seem to suggest that central midfield would be more of an end point for Alexander-Arnold than starting. The joy of the Liverpool man and his ability to hit with every club in the bag is that he need not only fulfil those roles. Instead of the 2023-24 iteration, Carsley could get Alexander-Arnold to do what he did in his earlier years at Liverpool, pushing higher and wider to deliver pin point crosses and create space for a forward to operate. Bukayo Saka would surely relish such an approach.
Building a team with Alexander-Arnold in it has its drawbacks. There will doubtless be games where England fans wish they had someone more defensively robust on the right side of their backline. But when the rewards are so great -- the second most assists from a defender in the Premier League ever at just 25 years of age -- the upside weighs far stronger. A change of management could be the making of Alexander-Arnold.
Of course, getting the best out of Alexander-Arnold will necessitate a more balanced defense elsewhere. There is no better version of the Liverpool man than one with license to shade his off ball requirements. So, having a left back who can tuck infield is a prerequisite.
In theory there is nothing stopping Luke Shaw doing that. In practice his availability is more bonus than likelihood, as was abundantly clear at Euro 2024. After the Manchester United man, England's immediate options at left back are nothing like the gaudy surfeit of talent they have long had on the opposite flank. Tyrick Mitchell would have been worth taking last summer, Rico Henry's absence felt like a profound loss and America's Antonee Robinson looked like the one that got away. But given the ostracising from Chelsea of Ben Chilwell, options on the left look few and far between.
No wonder then that Carsley's first squad appears to be as light on left backs as Southgate's last. Perhaps Rico Lewis or Tino Livramento will be asked to do a job on the opposite flank, but the most likely starting point is Colwill, reprising a role he played for Chelsea last season. Or at least an approximation of that role, given that under Mauricio Pochettino the 21-year-old was much more of a true up and down the flank left back than anyone might have expected from a player who made his way through the academy as a center back.
Under Enzo Maresca, Colwill is now anchoring an in-possession back three, a somewhat different role to the inverted left back role he might find himself in for England. If the system is the same and the spot changes, however, that might not be too much to ask of the youngster as the Three Lions look to address a problem position.
Part of the reason why Southgate was so keen to try Alexander-Arnold in midfield was that he could offer England something they had been craving for so many years: high grade passing in central areas. It is not, per se, that the country has not had it, more that the likes of Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves tended to get overlooked amid the insistence that the sheer talent of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard could just make it work. Much the same was apparent in the suggestion from some this summer that Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham could occupy the spaces in front of Declan Rice together, as if simply hurling the best 11 players onto the pitch and trusting them to figure it out had proven to be successful at another other stage in the preceding 58 years.
Carsley's England Under-21 side did things differently last summer. Balance and ball retention were watchwords right the way through to the victory over Spain in the final of the European Championships, the Young Lions averaging more possession throughout the tournament than all bar two teams. Even Spain, Portugal, France and Croatia did not match England's 57.8% of the ball. Carsley's first squad certainly indicates a desire to apply that youth team template to the senior squad.
Notable inclusions are Morgan Gibbs-White and Angel Gomes. While it is hard to see the former being the same all action midfielder he is for Nottingham Forest -- at least not when Jude Bellingham is back in contention -- the value of Gomes to England is more immediately apparent.
Certainly, his manager did not try to dim the spotlight when the Lille midfielder was the talk of the England press after his unexpected inclusion in the Nations League squad. "Angel's different to what we've got in terms of a player who can play deeper but play like a ten," said Carsley. "He's very skillful, the way he can receive balls, the way he can control games."
The number 10 who left Manchester United as a youngster has relished the deeper role earmarked for him by Paulo Fonseca at Lille. Last season he ranked among Ligue 1's top midfielders in terms of expected possession value provided by their passing and profiles particularly well as a player whose radar does not falter when he comes under opposition pressure. As the table below indicates, he keeps possession well while also progressing his side into the most dangerous areas of the field. These were the skills that England were crying out for when they cycled through Alexander-Arnold, Conor Gallagher and Kobbie Mainoo on their faltering journey to the Euro 2024 final.
TruMedia
If it often felt like Southgate did not know who he wanted to be the possession lynchpin in his England team, a high volume passing role that neither Declan Rice nor Mainoo, more natural at carrying the ball forward than passing it, seem ideally suited for. It is already apparent that Carsley thinks he has one up his sleeve. He and Gomes seem to have a connection, as the latter indicated. "The day before the Spain game, we literally spoke about different ways of being able to press them and even within that, other details. I'm just a bit of a football nerd," Gomes said in his first press conference as an England player, one where he showed signs of a footballing curiosity that previous generations of internationals have not always relished sharing. "If I'm watching the game, I'm trying to suss out what the teams are doing.
"I would like to say I am just a midfielder. I can operate in all three roles: I can play as the deep-lying midfielder, I can play as a No. 8, I can play as a No 10. I just love to play in the midfield and be able to distribute and help the team play in all different areas of the pitch. I am confident. I like keeping the ball, I like taking responsibility." Expect it to be thrust on him for as long as Carsley is in the job.
Gomes is not the only foundational player from the U-21s who could have a big role in the games ahead. Anthony Gordon might have gone to the Euros with England, but he was not anywhere near as important for Southgate as he had been the previous summer, tasked with leading the line for a side rocked by Folarin Balogun's switch to the USA. Gordon filled in ably as a center forward whose chief role was stretching the defense.
One of the most notable buzzwords that Carsley used to describe his plans for England was "expansive." It is just what is needed. At their worst in the summer it seemed Southgate's side had come to believe that the aim of the game was to congregate as many players in central spaces as possible. Phil Foden, Harry Kane, Bellingham and Saka all wanted to come to the ball; when their left back was also inverting they often found themselves having to wriggle around a maze of their own making.
England needed someone to stretch the pitch. The raw pace of Gordon would be exactly that, a player who might offer something distinct on the left even if that comes at the cost of one of Foden and Bellingham. For now there is a claim to be staked with both of those players missing -- though it appears Jack Grealish will take the starting spot on the left flank in Dublin. Don't be surprised if opportunities come the way of the Newcastle man during Carsley's tenure, however.
The four above him on this list might be somewhat to utter unknowns at the senior international level. You could not say quite the same about Harry Kane. But there is one almighty question hanging over the captain and record goal-scorer: was last summer a bad moment or a warning sign for 2026? The 31-year-old injured his back in the final weeks of a season where he had carried a heavy load for Bayern Munich, and by the time England made it to the final, Kane seemed to be dragging himself around the Olympiastadion. He himself refused to use the back issue as an excuse even as Southgate pointed to it.
Three years earlier Kane looked equally heavy legged for England in that first near miss of a Euros campaign. A more sprightly version of the skipper would doubtless aid Carsley from the outset, but what might be most intriguing is whether the new interim head coach can get Kane to play the right role for the team.
The fittest version of Kane might be able to get away with dropping deep into spaces occupied by the likes of Bellingham and Saka -- as evidenced in the heatmap above -- because he would then be able to burst into the box. The version that is likely to take the field in the U.S. two seasons from now will not be able to do that. He is and will probably remain the one man England want the ball to drop to in the penalty area. They just need him to be there.
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