I almost missed this crouton amidst the word soup. So you are saying that England will win Euro 2024 are you? Well I had a quick glance at the betting odds and England has the shortest odds. However England's odds are always shorter than form or expectation would otherwise determine, because of the sheer weight of money that gets placed on them (dare I say by mug punters on the way home from the pub!).

Palace since 19 August 1972. Palace 1 (Tony Taylor) Liverpool 1 (Emlyn Hughes)

Who's better - Wharton or Mainoo? I really don't have it as close.
Who's going to get picked?
What's better - a natural left back, or putting a right back at left back? What is Southgate going to do?
Add in up front only Kane ever produces the goods. Plus a dodgy defence - what do you get? I think we all already know.
Don't get your hopes up and shut your ears to 'it's coming home'.
Don't worry, I'm just the same - I'll get that false hope too.
I stopped watching international football for years and felt much better for it. Recent tournaments dragged me back in. Damn it.

Red and Blue Army!

It certainly is close - Wharton has obviously been a revelation for us, but the same is clearly true of Mainoo.

I never understand a lot of football fans mentality when it comes to the national team - we seem to exist in this bubble where everything bar winning a tournament is considered total failure, and then we wonder why there's a perpetual feeling of underachieving.

At club level, everyone recognises that success is very much relative and that knockout tournaments are notoriously difficult to win - see Man City in the Champions League - but apparently at international level success is not relative, we should win every tournament, and if we don't it's a result of major incompetency or underperformance.

World Cup 2018 - lost a semi-final after extra time.

Euro 2020 - lost the final on penalties.

World Cup 2022 - We missed a penalty and narrowly lost to the best team in the world.

If we just approached these tournaments as we might at club level; recognising that yes we are one of the top 2-3 teams in the tournament but also that there are other very strong teams, and accepting that knockout football is notoriously unpredictable and determined by fine margins, I think people would enjoy it a hell of a lot more.

I don't know enough about Mainoo what I would say about Wharton is that he seems to be the glue that holds the team together allowing the flair players to struct their stuff and protecting the defenders . If he can do that for England....

One more point

Agree with this - Wharton's profile is what gives him the best chance of making the squad... he offers something we don't really have elsewhere and would free up Rice to get around the pitch more, which I think could tempt Southgate.

I don't want to at all downplay how highly I rate Wharton - I think he's an incredible talent, but so is Mainoo.