An Open Letter To England Manager, Mr. Gareth Southgate
Dear Mr. Southgate,
Since you took on the England job back in 2016 you have transformed the fortunes of our beloved national team, with only Sir Alf Ramsay having a better record in tournament football.
You took a team on it’s knees and taught it to stand again, concurrently turning the fans from doubters to believers. The national discourse around the team used to be toxic with many fans expecting the team to fail on the biggest stage and enjoying ripping them to shreds in that failure, you have changed that.
Runs to the latter stages of tournaments have gone from a pressured rarity to a glorious expectation under your leadership and for this, fans across the nation will be forever grateful. Watching England reach the Semi-Finals of World Cup 2018 and the Euro 2020 Final at Wembley are memories that will make me smile forever.
The only problem with raising the level that much is that making those deep runs at major competitions becomes an expectation and with expectations comes pressure; both the team and yourself appear to be wilting under that pressure at Euro 2024.
The lack of desire and harmony the team showed in the second half against Serbia and throughout the entirety of the Denmark match was disheartening, especially as there seemed to be no plan to re-invigorate the performance.
Taking the lead in both matches sent a wave of joy round the pub, but this quickly turned into a tidal wave of frustration and anger as the team shrunk backwards and backwards, turning in on itself like an organism devouring itself.
Inviting our opponents to impose their will on proceedings, ratcheting up the pressure on our defence and strangling the life out of our attacking forays as they became rarer and rarer as the match wore on.
As England Manager I am sure you understanding the reasons for this timidity of action just as the game appears ours to control, but to a vast majority of us fans it seems wilfully perverse to so readily surrender the initiative when pushing on with an approach that has already delivered results is the option surrendered.
We have a plethora of attacking players that are the envy of all other teams at the Euros, so why not give them license to express their abilities and terrorise opposing defences??
Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden are both generational talents that can control any midfield, so pick one of them and let them command the pitch.
Yes, dropping one to the bench to allow the others game to flourish would be a hard call to make but if the results are worth it then that is what must be done. You are paid to make the choices no-one else has the will to make and the hardest choices require the strongest wills, so gather your strength and make the choice!
If it were my decision Bellingham edges it, with Foden a replacement past the hour mark with fresh legs to rip a tired opposition defence to shreds.
Replacing Foden with the pace and width of Anthony Gordon, who will run at defenders and skin them clean, would be my pick on the left as this would also provide a much needed foil for the diminishing speed of Harry Kane up front.
Personally, I would even be tempted to replace Kane with Ollie Watkins for the Slovenia game as he created more problems for the Danish defence in his mini cameo than Kane did for anyone in both games combined.
Please stop allowing fear to rule your heart Mr. Southgate and trust yourself to make the tough choices needed to turn this tournament around for us. Trust the players to score a second following the first and stop ordering the team to cower backwards once we have a lead, we are good enough to go for the jugular and rack up big scores, so please let the players prove me right.
We have an incredible team and you are an incredible manager, you even managed to get us winning a penalty shootout!!!!!
The nation trusts you, so trust yourself and trust the players. We went unbeaten for a whole calendar year with this team for a reason.
Please take on board what I have said here Mr. Southgate and lead the nation to victory on July 14th.
Kindest Regards,
A concerned England Fan
The Football tourist 