NEW YORK – The kindest interpretation is that some of the chaos is by design. The late goals, the introduction of the “finishers”, the fact that England remain in the World Cup only by virtue of Harry Kane’s greatest performance at a major tournament.
Beyond that, the prognosis has been bleak. Long before Thomas Tuchel, Gareth Southgate often trod the line between being able to identify their problems and address them – but not all of them can be traced back to Tuchel and not all of them can be easily fixed.
The right
Noni Madueke’s end product will continue to be scrutinised. The bigger problem is that he is largely doing what he is supposed to be doing in this system – rolling it back to Djed Spence. England are both predicable and fragile down the right, but it is not going to be rectified because 1. Tuchel has left Trent Alexander-Arnold at home, 2. In Reece James and Tino Livramento he picked two right-backs who were predictably going to get injured and 3. Bukayo Saka can come on but he is not fully fit either.
Spence is still carrying a jaw injury (Photo: Getty)
