I see what you're saying, but for me at this point the qualifiers and friendlies are irrelevant - Southgate has picked his squad, these are the players you have. Sterling and Lingard are two of his key men, you cannot simply discard them after one game that we still won because they missed a couple of chances.Faithless wrote:However if they don't score/assist how long do you keep going for? They've played against Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Scotland in this WC qualifying campaign and not found the net once.
If Alli is out next match then he's got a chance to change it around a bit anyway, he can do a straight swap of Alli for RLC or Rashford, or else change it up and play Vardy - I think he'll do the former.
If we beat Panama but neither look great, then the Belgium game is a dead rubber and an opportunity for experimenting a bit more.
It's worth remembering, in terms of the squads, what's picked is what's picked. There's no changes now, so there's no point in saying things like "Sterling gets 10 chances a game for Citeh, I could score 23 a season for them". Given a relatively even playing field in terms of squad strengths, the teams that do best are generally the ones that gel together and play with confidence. The most important thing that Southgate can do from here onwards other than get the right balance in the line up is to keep all his players confident and positive. If they're all constantly terrified of making a mistake and getting crucified in the press then we're ****ed from the start.