Southgate message wrong, Slot transfer reality & more

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why PSR must change, why Southgate should have led with a radically different message pre-Euros, why Liverpool won’t make a statement Euros signing and much more.

The players are mentally and physically knackered… Gareth should have led with that

The reality is that where you play in, for instance, the Premier League and La Liga, and you have 10 years of a cycle where it’s Premier League, Euros, Premier League, year off so we’ll go on an end-of-season tour, Premier League, World Cup, it’s going to tell. For Jude Bellingham, he hasn’t had that, so he doesn’t get the Harry Kane (who’s played a lot of football over a number of years) excuse. He’s 20 years of age. Phil Foden has played a lot of football. But, you can acknowledge that the players are mentally and physically fatigued and then acknowledge with equal legitimacy that it’s down to the manager to bring in fresh players that maybe haven’t played as many minutes, that are younger and haven’t been around the block like Harry Kane over a number of years… Cole Palmer, for example, looks fresh despite playing a lot of minutes last term. Anthony Gordon had injuries, played a lot of minutes but he should be fresh. It may well be that England moving forward, even if we bring in a Pep Guardiola or a Jose Mourinho to manage the side (and I’m sure they’ll be touted as names down the line), there’ll still be the challenge of mentally and physically fatigued players to handle.

I look at my own club, Aston Villa, and Unai Emery is one of the ones who comes out and says it as it is. Fullbacks, likely to bomb on, ‘Give me 60 minutes’. Then almost on 60 minutes, he will change one or both fullbacks. That means you’re playing two-thirds of the season effectively and should mean that as you get to the end of the season you remain fresher. It may be the case of saying, “Jude, Harry, Phil, Bukayo Saka – you’re our star men. Give me 60 minutes.” What does that say to the players? They’re not playing 90 and then after the hour mark, the cavalry will come. If Gareth had offered that message to the press before the tournament and acknowledged the fatigue hurdle, we might be sitting here viewing the situation very differently. We…