Watching England drift into series of fruitless half hearted attempts to make something, anything happen in the final 5 minutes of a game has become par for the course. It was probably as nearly dispiriting as playing for Southgate itself. Beyond, ‘why aren’t you playing Jack Grealish?’, my burning question was, ‘why isn’t anyone passing to Harry Kane?
Maybe as a Tottenham fan I was being oversensitive to the amount of time our captain and theirs was getting on the ball. Until I checked the data. Kane was on the pitch for 96 minutes and received the ball on just 13 occasions. In fact, trawling back through what have now been 10 UEFA Nations League games and 13 passes to Harry is comparatively high! Playing for Spurs, Kane can receive the ball up to 20 times or more in any one game.
All of which heavily suggests that Gareth Southgate needs to sit down with his coaches and work out how to get the ball through to his captain, the prolific goalscorer. Revolutionary stuff, I know, but I’m sure a man of Gareth Southgate’s intellectual prowess could solve this riddle.