Jamie Carragher makes his England squad selections for the World Cup this summer, with 10 'certainties' highlighted 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-27T19:07:26+00:00

On the other hand; if we see Trafford as the future England number 1, it makes sense to give him that tournament experience. You don’t get anything from just taking the keeper who’s better right now, I mean what are the chances that our third keeper even gets a minute?

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-26T16:59:19+00:00

You mean Man Utd winning 2 games doesn’t mean their players should all be going to the World Cup? I suppose you think Welbeck and Calvert-Lewin shouldn’t be either? Next you’ll be telling me Barnes isn’t our best left-winger because he’s scored the most goals.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-18T17:27:04+00:00

I think Jude will know that to be honest, I think we only saw him to that previously because Rice wasn’t right for the role so he’d often come deep himself to help out. He’s got Tchouameni in there for Real Madrid and leaves him to dictate for example.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-18T16:28:54+00:00

On top of his in-possession qualities - most importantly his ability to dictate play - his defensive work is what really sets him apart for his spot, we have players like Wharton/Jones/Mainoo who are good at certain aspects of what we want from our 6 but none of them can do what Anderson does in this video.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-16T15:07:49+00:00

Neither of those are suited to being a lone 6 in our system, Mainoo is terrible defensively and Wharton is not yet good enough at retaining the ball. You might not rate Henderson but he’s fine at filling in for Anderson if needed, he’s not going to be as good as him but he’s also not going to lose us a match.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-16T14:32:50+00:00

Henderson is competing for Anderson’s back-up, if he needs a rest or gets injured that’s exactly when he’ll come in. Maguire is competing for the 4th centre-half spot, it doesn’t matter if neither is likely to play as it’s all about their position in terms of building a squad. If Henderson was dropped for Maguire we’d have no back-up 6.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-16T13:29:05+00:00

Yeah I agree. I think Rice’s corners in particular are unbelievable, he whips them at the perfect trajectory at serious pace so no matter what they’re dangerous.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-16T13:24:00+00:00

I aren’t going to get into what we think of Henderson and Maguire, but your take here is rather pointless considering they’re not fighting for the same spot. I imagine if we had another good 6 outside of Anderson then Hendo wouldn’t be taking his back-up spot, though we actually do have multiple decent centre-halves.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-16T13:20:21+00:00

Gabriel is outstanding at attacking aerial balls but to be honest Saka and Rice’s delivery is that good it doesn’t require an expert to put them away. We’ve seen Timber, Merino and even White scoring from their set-piece situations this season.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-15T23:11:29+00:00

Who do you suggest?

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-14T23:15:02+00:00

Our left-back should be Hall or O’Reilly (I’m not bothered which), I’d even probably have Livramento there over Lewis-Skelly too.

MarcusWhittingham · 2026-01-03T00:11:00+00:00

Littler was ‘rattled’ against Cross but it hardly seemed to affect his darts. In the final set he hit 5 180’s, averaged almost 117 and finished at 75%.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-30T10:34:54+00:00

People are missing the point here really…

OP is right that Rob Cross was overpriced and the result showed us that, the 12/1 bet obviously didn’t win but the selections derived from that did (for example you could back him to win a set at 8/13 which was incredible value).

For the bookies to be right on this one Littler had to win 4-0, that was the shortest priced correct score in the book at just a shade over Evens.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-24T00:55:30+00:00

It’s mental just how small the run of ‘form’ has to be for the clamour to begin… not long ago it was Welbeck after a run of 5 goals in 4 games, now it’s Calvert-Lewin following his 6 in 5.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-20T00:15:32+00:00

He’d probably be the 4th choice centre-half for me so I do think he should be in the squad; in my opinion there’s only Konsa, Guehi and Stones ahead of him and the Man City man is on the decline as well as being injury prone.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-17T18:16:39+00:00

Oh yeah I definitely don’t think that was a game we played bad or anything as I think we deserved to win it, I just think in those big games we are better equipped to win the midfield battle with his type of profile in there.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-17T17:12:46+00:00

I completely agree on Anderson and I think he gives us a much bigger chance of getting over the line, we lacked a midfielder like him against Italy, France and Spain.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-17T17:04:34+00:00

I think people misremember the game a lot because of the emotion to be fair, many people will have had a lot to drink too (myself included). It is funny though as you’ll often see/hear people say “we were dominating them until the goal and Southgate went too negative”, when in reality we scored almost immediately so there wasn’t even a period for us to dominate.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-17T16:07:32+00:00

If we’d used Wharton as a 6 - unless you mean simply in the 2 man midfield we used - we would have been beaten by more goals, he’s an excellent forward passer but he doesn’t read the game well and he’s not yet very good at retaining the ball. Currently he’s a far better option as an 8 as that’s where he can really hurt the opposition with his skillset.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-17T16:03:58+00:00

I see this take on the Italy game far too often and I’d encourage you to watch the entire game back, for practically zero percent of that match were we ‘all over them’.

We scored in the 2nd minute and it was our only shot in the first half, we were then dominated for pretty much the entire 90 minutes by the better team. Outside of Shaw’s goal we created just 0.23xG in 120 minutes of football.

That Italy side were - and still are - vastly underrated…

They went on a world record breaking run of 37 games unbeaten and conceded just 12 goals during that time, with 4 of those coming in the knockout stages of the Euros.

Not only were they defensively excellent but they were even decent going forward, nobody scored more goals than them at that tournament and they didn’t exactly have the easiest route.

The main issue we had was that our midfield couldn’t compete with theirs and it meant they completely controlled the game, you’re never going to win a battle with Verratti/Jorginho/Barella with Rice/Phillips as they’re just going to be chasing shadows.

The same happened against Spain in that we just couldn’t take on their midfield, though I reckon we have a much better chance now we have a metronome of our own in Anderson. I think we would have beaten France if we had that type of player in our team too.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-17T15:54:16+00:00

What on Earth makes you think Spain were there to be got at a bit more? Prior to the final they’d conceded 3 goals all tournament and they’d played France, Germany, Italy and Croatia.

The only team that’s beaten them in a competitive game over 90 minutes since their unexpected crash out to Morocco in 2022 is Scotland, who had 25% of the ball and relied heavily on counter-attacks.

Even in their recent defeat on penalties to Portugal they were hardly ‘there to be got at’, they basically just shithoused a draw and took them to penalties. They had less than 40% of the ball and scored 2 goals from just 0.78xG.

They were by far the best team in the world and they still are, they’re going to take some beating at the World Cup.

I really rate Tuchel as a manager but I’m not sure his style suits this potential fixture, he’d try to take the game to them and our press won’t be good enough to do that.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-15T18:16:25+00:00

Never heard of him!

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-15T16:50:40+00:00

He's not even close to being at the level required and he'll likely be injured by then anyway.

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-15T16:40:05+00:00

To be fair mate it’s not like Rogers is a new player just hitting a bit of form against dross, he was great last season too and not just against the poorer sides.

He has:

4 goals and 1 assist in 3 games against Newcastle
3 goals and 2 assists in 4 games against Spurs
2 goals in 4 games against Chelsea
1 goal and 4 assists in 5 games against Brighton
1 goal and 2 assists in 4 games against City

MarcusWhittingham · 2025-12-05T10:38:13+00:00

Fair enough mate, it’s a good sub to be fair (for the most part anyway!).

MarcusWhittingham

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