Without Wayne Rooney the manager can concentrate on creating a side that recaptures the imagination with a strong team ethic and a game plan
Here we go again. Time to fire up the sirens, unfurl the St George Cross flag and rattle off once more on the charabanc of doomed hope and certain despair. The Gareth Southgate England era has at least been notable for its ability to cut straight to the point. This is already the first England reign to begin rather than simply end with an ashen-faced apology, Southgate spending those first few weeks looking sad and saying sorry for all that stuff with Big Sam, Iceland and pretty much everything else for the last 50 years or so.
Six months on the games against Germany in Dortmund and Lithuania at Wembley do at last feel like the start of something. This is for one thing a genuinely Southgate England squad, with eight changes – albeit half through injury – from the make-do-and-mend job against Malta in October.
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