Southgate for me has done he very well as England manager although I’d suggest a lot of this has come about from his seemingly very good man management and morale building ability. I do however have far less faith in his ‘footballing genius’ if you like and therefore whilst the players may perform better when they’re all chummy and content the actual tactical approach can be lacking.

I think this is why we see the same players being kept around. If you look at our team now we have Bayern’s best striker, Real Madrids new wonderkid, a few starlets for a team dominating club football now (MCity) plus a load more top, top players to pick from. By keeping them all happy they’ll of course perform well but in tough situations I can’t see the manager taking initiative and thinking us out of it.

I also think this is why the likes of Eze may struggle a bit more to break through. As a Palace fan I also support our players and therefore would love it for Eze to feature more for his benefit (confidence, belief and experience) however the drawbacks may include injury, higher profile leading to his possible departure or even damage to confidence should something negative happen. Southgate seems to cling a bit more to that he knows and is reluctant to really shake things up or experiment, and he may be correct in this approach of course, but whatever happens my primary concern will always be Palace and our players. I’m inclined to believe Marc is massively maturing from the experience as a side note.

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

Thought the game last night was crying out for him to be brought on but the dope in charge bottled it.

I could not agree more they have been exceptional recently and appear to be mustering a good competitive group of players for international level games.
Being of the older variety I am just slightly concerned that the “ Auld Enemy “ approach could return for one night only and Eze could suffer because of it. Your reassurance is iheartening.COYP

Sadly I'm not young and in fact am quite ancient.
I don't enjoy international football and don't find it a particularly high standard.
The World Cup and African Nations is very disruptive to domestic football.
Many of the decisions are taken for commercial reasons e.g the bloated nature and the move to have the World Cup every 2 years

TOO MUCH EXPOSURE TO FOOTBALL THESE DAYS.

Match of the Day with David Coleman Saturday Night then the Big Match sunday afternoon with Brian Moore and Jimmy Hill.

They were the glory days. Before Sky and satellite/internet changed our lives.

Villa on Saturday and John McGinn in midfield for Scotland on Tuesday. All he ever does is kick players. Would rather Ebs had nothing to do with it.