Gareth Southgate has got an absolute shooing in the press after the booing of fans in Wolverhampton destroys six years of work with England.
On the lash
To be fair to The Sun, both ‘GOULASHED’ and ‘HUNGAR SHAMES’ are wonderful headlines, even if the first clearly came from the tabloid encyclopaedia of foreign countries that sees ‘goulash’ next to Hungary, ‘pizza’ next to Italy and ‘kebab’ next to Turkey. What’s Hungarian? Goulash, of course.
Inside The Sun, we are told that this run from England is ‘getting as bad’ as ‘Roy Hodgson’s disastrous Brazilian campaign of 2014’, equating a run of poor performances in the Nations League at the end of a ridiculous season with World Cup humiliation as if that were any comparison at all.
‘They are now staring down the barrel at relegation to the second tier of the Nations League – where they could face minnows such as Montenegro, Albania and Scotland.’
And actual world champions France. Because they are bottom of their Nations League group too and are also ‘staring down the barrel of relegation’.
‘You could put this miserable international break down to tired bodies and minds but that would be generous, given than England’s opponents have also arrived on the back of long domestic campaigns.’
Well maybe we should be generous because let’s take a look at the difference between the domestic games played by England’s front three from Tuesday night with their Hungarian equivalents.
Attila Szalai: 3138 minutes for Fenerbahce
Harry Kane: 4250 minutes for Tottenham
Roland Sallai: 1784 minutes for Freiburg
Jarrod Bowen: 4090 minutes for West Ham
Dominik Szoboszlai: 1918 minutes for RB Leipzig
Bukayo Saka: 3359 minutes for Arsenal
Mediawatch has not going to go through the rest of the XI but we can make a bloody good guess that the pattern would be repeated throughout the team. There is a reason why England were twice outplayed by Hungary but matched both Italy and Germany; they are knackered and so are the other footballers who play at an elite level.
Walk out to Winter
If you want a hatchet job on Gareth Southgate then the tabloids are bizarrely not the place to look but The Times, where Henry Winter is gunning for the England manager who has taken his team to two major tournament semi-finals.
‘Gareth Southgate’s long, warm honeymoon is over, replaced by the heat of the fans’ wrath. Those who once sang “Southgate, you’re the one, you still turn me on” now…
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