This England group is approaching the end of a cycle and supposedly peaking. The trajectory is clear, World Cup semi-finalist, European Championship finalists, World Cup winners. That is not so outlandish an idea yet England looked to be barrelling in the opposite direction in Budapest, shapeless, listless and ultimately clueless.
The requirement five matches out from the World Cup is stability and order, a grooved method executed by players furnished with clarity and understanding. Instead we head to Munich for a fixture with a historic rival mired in unnecessary introspection and doubt, manna for Die Mannschaft, you might imagine.
Complaints about the heat, fatigue, absence, disruptions ring hollow when you select a team with three centre-backs reluctant to cross the halfway line and a midfield ill-equipped to meet the challenge.
The one lesson England were taught in defeats against Croatia in the World Cup and Italy at the Euros, matches they led in the opening five minutes by the way, was the primacy of midfield control. Luca Modric and Ivan Rakatic in Moscow and Marco Verratti and Jorginho at Wembley did a number on England in the middle of the park, establishing a rhythm that ultimately took the game away from their fast-starting opponents.
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If Gareth Southgate felt justified in experimenting, then by the same token let him be bound by the rules of science and follow the evidence, which in this case was damning. The three centre-back method works only if the system releases one of them to break the lines and enter midfield. Budapest was a soporific reprise of the worst of Manchester United under Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho, the ball going sideways and backwards in front of the defence and in their own half.
The fault was compounded by a dysfunctional midfield in which Declan Rice remained too deep, leaving Jude Bellingham outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and, as a result, pulled wholly out of shape. Without a central presence, there was no available pass to allow wingbacks Trent Alexander-Arnold and James Justin to connect through the midfield, and so it had to go back, and did with numbing regularity.
England’s attack was thus starved of meaningful balls. As the first half wore on the long ball bypassing the midfield became the go-to option. Southgate effectively managed a backward leap of half a century, returning England to the 1970s, a decade in which the mother country twice failed to qualify for the World Cup.
In this scenario Harry Kane was forced ever deeper and Mason Mount, who is rarely a wide player in a three anyway for the national side, rendered even more ineffective. Only Jarrod Bowen of the notional attacking trident created any danger, relying on an instinct for foraging necessary at West Ham, where he is used to spending long periods without the ball.
If Southgate didn’t know it before, the Budapest test surely convinced him to stick to a conventional back four if only to ensure connectivity in the middle of the park. Rice is pre-programmed to sit deep. This is catastrophic in a static back-three, less so if he is at the base of a midfield with the requisite mobility.
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Saturday’s configuration denied us a chance to see Bellingham doing what he does best for Dortmund in the Bundesliga, carrying the ball forward, initiating gear changes in the middle of the park that crack teams open and put them under pressure, much like Hungary did to England in fact.
If Southgate is to keep faith with Mount, whose work rate and willingness to tackle back is a comfort blanket for coaches, then it has to be in an advanced central role within a 4-3-3 formation, leaving space for two of Raheem Sterling, Jack Grealish, Bukayo Saka or Bowen to partner Kane in a more dynamic front three.
Southgate is hampered on this trip by the absence of a conventional left back. The Justin experiment was the solution in Budapest. Again he was not helped by the system. Saka offers an obvious alternative that in a 4-3-3 configuration provides the Arsenal trickster with sufficient scope for overlapping. Ditto Kyle Walker, Reece James or Alexander-Arnold on the right, neither of whom in full flight is a welcome prospect for any defence.
Southgate says he knows his best team. Now would be the time to play it.
Kevin Garside’s XI: Pickford; Walker, Stones, Maguire, Saka; Rice, Bellingham, Mount; Sterling, Kane, Grealish.
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