Turning England’s kittens into attacking lions

Because we English seem to have a taste for knocking people when they’re on top and then picking them up when they’re down, Gareth Southgate has had a pretty good press recently.

His ‘achievements’ in coaching our national football team to the final stages of recent World and Euro Cups have been praised.

Quite quickly, now the proverbial dust has settled, those muddled displays against Iceland, Serbia, Slovenia, Denmark etc have almost been brushed over.

But maybe the most persistent criticism of England under Southgate has not been about results, but the style of play.

Especially against teams we’re expected to beat, it’s as if there’s a disconnect between what we, as fans, think the players should be doing and what’s actually been encouraged by Southgate and his staff.

And for that, I’m afraid, we may have to cast a glance in the direction of the Manchester Citys and Arsenals and Messrs Guardiola and Arteta.

My long-standing friend Mike Green is a football man through and through.

He began playing in Carlisle as soon as he could pull on a pair of boots, became an ‘apprentice’ at Brunton Park and went on to a distinguished career as a centre-back with Gillingham, Bristol Rovers and Plymouth Argyle before becoming player-manager and then manager of Torquay United from 1977-81.

He was an excellent coach and a promising manager, who turned his back on the pro game after losing his job at Plainmoor. He still lives in Torquay.

He rarely watches football, particularly the Premier League, on television and he hasn’t done for several years.

Mike simply wasn’t enjoying it any more.

He couldn’t handle players passing sideways instead of forwards, wingers not trying to take on full-backs, not delivering crosses at early opportunities and strikers not getting across defenders, especially at the near-post, which is where many crosses end up.

All those things, Green and his young teammates had been taught to do and he later coached. I think many of us know how he feels.

It cannot be a coincidence that, for all the technical brilliance (and wins) laid before them each week, the Etihad and Emirates crowds do not generate the atmospheres you’d expect.

They play a relentlessly possession-based brand of football, which often leaves even a centre-forward with the build and record of Erling Haaland looking like a spare you-know-what, waiting impatiently for the moments when one of his teammates finally comes up with a pass into the penalty area.

Because they can afford some of the most gifted players in the world, it works for them.

You can hardly expect a national coach to tell players who are drilled in those tactics week in and week out for their clubs to start adopting a more adventurous style when they pull on an England shirt. Even if Southgate wanted them to.

The giveaway, of course, is that when they really have to go for it, those same players are capable of doing so. But only, it seems, for short spells.

After the late Bill Shankly’s Liverpool team had struggled at home one night in a European Cup tie in the early 1970s, he was asked whether he might have to change the Reds’ style of play to combat the extra passing game of Continental opponents.

“What?”, he retorted, pointing towards the emptying Kop. “In front of them, when they’re freezing their b...s off in the middle of winter? They wouldn’t put up with it, man.”

Fifty years on Premier League players now have perfect pitches to play on and our winters aren’t as hard as they used to be, but our fans still want plenty of action for their expensive tickets.

And they certainly don’t want the England team playing like kittens instead of lions.

You may not be familiar with John McDermott. After running Tottenham Hotspur’s Academy and their Under-18 and Under-19 teams, he is the FA’s Technical Director.

Whether or not you think that background qualifies him for the job, McDermott will have the biggest say in appointing Southgate’s successor.

Let’s hope he goes for someone prepared to take at least a few risks every now and again. And let’s give him (or her) a bit of credit for doing it.