Lack of minutes for English players is a headache for Gareth Southgate

Gareth Southgate has a MAJOR headache after a lack of minutes for English players this season ahead of games against Ukraine and Scotland

• Only 57 of 220 starters in the Premier League last weekend qualify for England 
• Central defence will be the biggest concern to England boss Gareth Southgate 
• Would Mohamed Salah ‘do the dirty’ on Liverpool by leaving? And what about Man United ‘diving’?: Listen to It’s All Kicking Off, Mail Sport’s new podcast 

Gareth Southgate has a squad to select this week, so nobody will be more painfully aware that English players are desperately short of Premier League action.

Only 57 of the 220 players to start the last round of fixtures in our top flight qualify for Southgate’s team — and six of them are goalkeepers.

The percentages tighten even further among the so-called elite, the Premier League’s traditional Big Six. Tottenham, not long ago a haven for English footballers, and Liverpool started with one each. The Manchester clubs both with two.

Fulham started at Arsenal on Saturday without a single player available to Southgate. Everton, with six starters against Wolves, boasted the most. They were the only team more than half English, and with neither a point nor a goal on the board are not a particularly good advert for reversing the trend.

It is a trend well set. In fact, so well set that its acceleration barely elicits the raising of an eyebrow. It’s the modern game, after all.

England boss Gareth Southgate has a major headache as he prepares to name his squad for the latest internationals this week

Harry Maguire is one of Southgate’s trusted England players who are lacking regular matches – while Levi Colwill (R) could be promoted to the senior squad

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Chelsea were first to field a team without an English player back in 1999. We all understand how internationalism is central to the Premier League’s success, its global appeal and ability to ride out crises like the pandemic relatively unscathed.

For a succession of England bosses, however, it has become a headache. Across the first three weeks of this season, only 28 per cent of all Premier League starters were English. This is down from 31 per cent across last season and down from 36 per cent in 2020-21. The rate is alarming.

Central defence is the area of most concern for Southgate, and has been for some time, hence the endless debate around Harry Maguire, the Manchester United defender with no competitive football since the barely competitive 7-0 win against North Macedonia in June.

Of the five specialist centre-halves selected for the World Cup less than a year ago, John Stones is injured, and Maguire and Eric Dier are well out of favour at their clubs. Conor Coady, who has signed for Leicester in the Championship, is injured.

The only one of the five fit and playing is Ben White, who has not been capped by England since returning home early from Qatar. With Tyrone Mings also injured, it feels like the right time for Southgate to coax White back and to promote Chelsea’s Levi Colwill to the senior squad for next month’s games, a Euro 2024 qualifier against Ukraine and a friendly against Scotland.

This is not a crisis about to derail England’s excellent start to the qualifying campaign but there is a broader point.

Many of Southgate’s central defensive options will spend this season fighting in the lower half of the Premier League, often defending deep, often on the back foot, precisely the opposite to the style of football England are trying to produce as they build towards another tournament next summer.

It is a curious situation because English football hardly seems in poor health. Lee Carsley’s Under 21s are European champions, a title won without selecting Bukayo Saka or Jude Bellingham, who were both eligible. At 23, Phil Foden sparkles for all-conquering Manchester City. At 24, Declan Rice commands a fee of £105million.

England won the Under 21 European Championships but its stars will need chances to kick on

Bukayo Saka is one of few players to have made the vast leap from academy to senior football

These individuals are gleaming products of the controversial Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), launched by the Premier League in 2011, freeing the biggest clubs to hoover up the best young talent and nurture it inside their gilded academies.

While it has done little to help those struggling to survive on the lower slopes of English football’s pyramid system, the EPPP has undoubtedly achieved its aim of delivering elite teenage footballers, able to compete with similar age groups from any country around the world.

Unfortunately, it solved only half of the puzzle because still only a tiny fraction of the talent developed to the age of 18 can find the opportunity to kick on.

Inevitably, the void between academy football and the self-proclaimed best league in the world is enormous and, although some like Saka make it appear simple, it is arguably more difficult than ever to bridge.

Loans and moves abroad are potential solutions. Plenty of the current England team were forged in the EFL, yet it is perhaps as far removed in terms of quality and tactics as ever from the top of the Premier League.

IT’S ALL KICKING OFF! 

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