England - the future....

[Stuka]

Pretty sure I could hear the England fans singing "You're British till you die".

Lovely stuff

Yeah m8, you heard right - I've got a video of it, will tag you in it on faceyb at some point

Yeah man can't wait to see your pics etc! Do post them up.

[Will95]

Pretty sure I could hear the England fans singing "You're British till you die".

Lovely stuff

Right after singing about how we wanted them to fukk off

[Zammo]

Will Stewart Downing be picked in the squad again after his 45 mins vs Scotland?

[TBM]

Read this morning that Hodgson has given Southgate first choice on who he wants to take to the U21 Euros next summer....

It means the likes of Wilshere, Ox, Sterling, Barkley, Shaw, Jones, Chambers etc could well play

Do you think this is a good thing? - or agree with Wenger and say you shouldn't "downgrade" a player once he's made his full team debut?

[Big Foot]

Read this morning that Hodgson has given Southgate first choice on who he wants to take to the U21 Euros next summer....

It means the likes of Wilshere, Ox, Sterling, Barkley, Shaw, Jones, Chambers etc could well play

Do you think this is a good thing? - or agree with Wenger and say you shouldn't "downgrade" a player once he's made his full team debut?

It's a good thing - good experience of tournament football, further opportunity to play together and the chance to win a trophy & generate a feel good factor

Wenger's comments about "downgrading" a player don't wash either - so a 18 year old lad who plays for the first team then couldn't play for an under 21s team at club level? Nonsense

[TBM]

Read this morning that Hodgson has given Southgate first choice on who he wants to take to the U21 Euros next summer....

It means the likes of Wilshere, Ox, Sterling, Barkley, Shaw, Jones, Chambers etc could well play

Do you think this is a good thing? - or agree with Wenger and say you shouldn't "downgrade" a player once he's made his full team debut?

It's a good thing - good experience of tournament football, further opportunity to play together and the chance to win a trophy & generate a feel good factor

Wenger's comments about "downgrading" a player don't wash either - so a 18 year old lad who plays for the first team then couldn't play for an under 21s team at club level? Nonsense

I think he is (a) trying to protect his players as 3 of them could go and (b) the likes of Wilshere, Ox etc are first team players for the 1st team England squad

But on a selfish note i would love to see it, would make the competition worth watching

[Big Foot]

Oh, it's absolutely about self preservation - I was just making a comparison to club football to show how his point doesn't work

[Maguire]

Would tend to agree with Ryan Bertrand that he has been unlucky not to have made the squad for these games, in light of his form, and the patchy form of Luke Shaw. Brought into focus by Baines' injury which leaves Kieran Gibbs as the only fit left-back available.

Shaw has been playing pretty well for United in the last couple of games tbf

Bit late to reply but wanted to say that I agree with this - he's looking fitter and more composed to my eye.

[Hoop Blah]

I think the merits of 'downgrading' a player really depends on the players involved. The biggest worry for me would be that most of those that get downgraded will potentially have gone 3 summers without a proper break by the time the Euro's come round next year and it'll effect them there for the Seniors if selected.

The other factor is whether they need to gain this additional tournament experience at all. Pretty much all of them will have been involved in at least one tournament for England Seniors let alone the age group teams and so I'm not sure there's quite the benefit that the media are selling (as individuals).

Having said that, I think it would be good for the likes of Chambers, Stones, Shaw and Barkley who aren't yet regulars in the senior team but are certainly the future and it would be good to have them building their experience and partnerships in that environment and learning about the pressures of being key players in a squad at a higher profile tournament. I don't see the point in sending more established players Sterling, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wilshire and Jones though.

A side of Butland, Jenkinson, Chambers, Stones, Shaw, Ward-Prowse, Hughes, Ince, Barkley, Redmond, Berahino would be good to watch.

What would be our strongest eligible side?

Butland
Chambers, Jones, Stones, Shaw
Wilshire, Ward-Prowse
Sterling, Barkley, Oxlade-Chamberlain
Berahino or Kane

There's also the likes of Shelvey, Wickham, Zaha, Chalobah, Flanagan, Wisdom, Powell and Dier who don't even get in either of those sides but have shown themselves to be very promising.

[TBM]

When you look at those players you realise we haven't actually got a bad bunch coming through but the defence still worries me...

We need the next Terry, Ferdinand, Adams, Campbell etc to emerge....

[Sanguine]

Maybe Dan Burn?

[Royal Rother]

Seems to me that all our most promising young centre backs get played as full backs once they move to a big club.

Jones, Chambers, Stones, Smalling and I'm sure there are others.

To one degree or another they have all looked like potentially the next Terry, Ferdinand etc. but it seems as soon as they get transferred to a big club the managers are wary of them making a mistake in CD (where it is likely to be more costly) so stick 'em out as FB, which stunts their development.

Jones looked like being a superb CD when he was at Blackburn....

Ok, shoot me down.

[Royalclapper]

Won't part of the issue be Southgate wanting to have a strong side so that he can put himself in the frame for the Senior squad managers position when it next becomes available.

They've got a tough group by the looks with Italy, Portugal and Sweden and a good showing from the U21s won't harm his claims, although even if his sights aren't set on Hodgsons job, surely he'll still want as strong a team as possible knowing they'll face decent opposition.

Interesting to see if the players could adapt to different systems from U21 to senior level, I'd guess some players look much more effective in the U21s without going on to make the position their own at senior level.

[Hoop Blah]

Seems to me that all our most promising young centre backs get played as full backs once they move to a big club.

Jones, Chambers, Stones, Smalling and I'm sure there are others.

To one degree or another they have all looked like potentially the next Terry, Ferdinand etc. but it seems as soon as they get transferred to a big club the managers are wary of them making a mistake in CD (where it is likely to be more costly) so stick 'em out as FB, which stunts their development.

Jones looked like being a superb CD when he was at Blackburn....

Ok, shoot me down.

I'd totally agree with that, and the point that we do, depstite all the bluster about lack of talent our game produces, have a decent bunch of good technical players coming through.

A bug bear of mine is that the big clubs mop up all the talent and we don't see a lot of that talent kick on in the way we'd like. You only have to look at players like Sturridge, Richards, Parker, Johnson, Sinclair and Jones who, over the years, have probably jumped up too early and their progress stunted instead of getting games and learning their trade.

I wonder if the success of Terry and Ferdinand has meant we've not developed their successors sufficiently as we are certainly lacking in centre halfs who are now hitting their peak years of their late 20's.

[Royal Rother]

Yep.

One real positive I've noticed of late is that our players' ball control (for so long one of the real embarrassments watching England teams) is actually bloody good now.

We have started to really ping the ball around and the 1st touch has been excellent.

Not the be all and end all by any means but a sign of progress in our game that pleases me.

[bcubed]

When you look at those players you realise we haven't actually got a bad bunch coming through but the defence still worries me...

We need the next Terry, Ferdinand, Adams, Campbell etc to emerge....

Agree with this

Actually think we have been playing ok since World Cup
Much better in possession, but lacking killer pass or finish.

Now we seem to playing with a bit more zip, closing teams down and finding a way to score on a regular basis.

But the nagging doubt remains can we defend against a decent team?

[Royalclapper]

You can see why the FA are trying their best to organise some friendlies against good opposition, heard the French and Dutch mentioned.

Given our qualifying group is pretty much dross, it's difficult to assess just how we'd cope with top class attacking teams. Thought it was telling before the last WC when Chile came to Wembley..............Sanchez was a different class to anything we'd encountered previously and even had Cahill in a spin, you knew then what was going to unfold once we came up against decent opposition.

They were probably left a bit disappointed that Scotland didn't attack with any intensity on Tues...........it was a rare chance to play a side who'd go right at us, as it turned out the jocks were knackered after RoI game and it didn't happen.

[Hoop Blah]

Yep.

One real positive I've noticed of late is that our players' ball control (for so long one of the real embarrassments watching England teams) is actually bloody good now.

We have started to really ping the ball around and the 1st touch has been excellent.

Not the be all and end all by any means but a sign of progress in our game that pleases me.

The FA gets no credit for this but how many times over the last 10 years have we heard how they need to restructure youth development to produce better players (on here and in the media that is).

Our youth teams do really well for the most part and our U19s and U21s have some cracking technical players which is a good sign.

Our biggest issue is turning those good young pro's into good international players capable of taking that youth success into the Senior level.

[Royal Rother]

One of the problems we have in developing these good young players may be the pressure they (and the managers selecting them) are under in the Premier League.

They (particularly the defenders) get lambasted by all and sundry when they have a poor game.

Some of it is constructive, some not, but every error gets scrutinised.

Take Chambers for instance - he has looked pretty good for Arsenal - very promising but a bit raw. Mind you, he's not playing in his preferred position. He gets ripped a new hole against Anderlecht and the world is on his back. He will be embarrassed by that game, but rather than being able to put it to one side and simply learn from the experience and ask himself "what could I have done differently" he also has to put aside the Twitterati comments, the TV analysis, the general media focus his poor performance attracted.

I know it's the modern game but it must be more difficult to remain confident in oneself as a very young man when under that sort of scrutiny / pressure.

It may well be the same the world over, but I do wonder whether young players in say Dutch, German, Spanish, South American Leagues have quite the same pressures and therefore are able to make that step up from promising youngster to established confident mature player more readily.

[Hoop Blah]

I'd agree with that, and it's possibly another reason why young players shouldn't move so quickly. At Southampton Chambers was getting good experience without the more intense scrutiny of playing for one of the bigger clubs.

Saying that, he's getting to play Champions League football and push himself to higher levels by moving on, and that might be what he needs to improve, but it's hard to know what's best for them at such an early stage of their career.

It's perhaps a sympton of the 'want it all now' society we live in.