It’s time to once again speculate on the inner workings of the mind of Mr Negative, Gareth Southgate.
With England all but through to the next round of the World Cup (provided they don’t go down to more than four goals against Wales), Southgate has a chance to give some more of the squad a runout tonight.
England struggled up front against the USA on Friday, not helped by Harry Kane being seemingly terrified of crossing the halfway line for some reason, so surely now would be the time to unleash Callum Wilson from the off to show what he can do. He’s already provided an assist in this competition in the brief cameo against Iran, so he will be itching to get his name on the scoresheet.
Trippier has been solid in the two games previously and made it through the 90 minutes of each game, but maybe Southgate will look to rest him and keep him fresh for the first knockout game along with a few others.
I can’t see Pickford being dropped for Pope, so I doubt we’ll see our number 1 getting any time on the pitch unless something were to happen to Pickford, but Wilson has a real chance to start tonight. He just offers something different to Harry Kane … in that he will be in the box should a midfielder play a forward pass or put a cross in (heaven forbid).
All that being said, though, we are talking about Gareth Southgate, a man so bereft of ideas that some Newcastle fans have been comparing him to Steve Bruce, so he’ll probably stick with the same team, or at least the same “tactics”.
Kick off tonight is at 7pm and the Vital Football Podcast will be live at 9pm with reaction to that game, the FA Cup Third Round draw and more, so join us there on YouTube at 9pm and get your comments in Live.