In the last 2 major tournaments we have seen England cruelly knocked out in the semi’s and final respectively. With this young squad seemingly only going to get better it wasn’t unfeasible to imagine England going all the way and winning it on Southgate’s third time lucky.

Despite this, England now find themselves in a situation where they have only 2 draws and 3 losses from the last 5 games, have scored no-open play goals, and finish bottom of an albeit strong nations league group but with an embarrassing outcome nonetheless.

So what went wrong?

Whatever ‘identity’ England have had under Gareth Southgate seems to have disappeared into nothingness. 6 years into his stint as England manager he remains unclear on what his strongest XI is and how to use his players. It’s no secret that in previous tournaments we relied heavily on set pieces but the complete lack of ingenuity stemming from the tactics makes for a difficult watch.

The omittance of arguably England’s most natural RCB despite him being a stalwart in the defence of the team who sit top of the league is hard to explain. With the argument that ‘he’s not been playing as a CB’ falling short since White’s inverted fullback role has been very similar to that of a RCB. In addition to this, the persistence to use England’s best performing winger this season as a LWB continues to be a puzzling one.

These 2 cases provide good examples of how Southgate struggles to accurately profile players and how his loyalty towards some will continue to burn him.

What the players need is clarity and continuity. They are used to playing in possession based sides in a 4 at the back system so it’s pretty hard to justify Southgate using a 3 at the back other than due to his own tactical deficiencies. It’s not as if we need to play this way due to a lack of quality either, this is one of the most talented squads in the world.

So my simple answer? Go back to basics, just not Southgate’s basics.