Pep Guardiola to manage Everton AND England and sign Harry Maguire?

Pep Guardiola as England manager is a lovely idea but would it work? Well it would if he managed at club level too.

Send your views on England and the return of the Premier League to theeditor@football365.com

Just make Everton into England FC and appoint Pep
Would Pep really be a good national team manager? He’s a manager that focuses on the minute details of formations, player positioning and behaviour so would he be able to adequately coach this into his players in the week and half he’d get five times a year? It’d be interesting to see at the least.

I found it very funny how the pundits were talking about how England needed a focal point and Kane being back would give that to them. Harry Kane? Harry Kane the defensive midfielder, left back, right midfielder? That Harry Kane?

I’ve an idea though. Why don’t the FA buy a Premier League team and just sign English players? Buy Everton, make Pep the manager and play the same team in internationals, you’d end up winning everything.

BTW, Saka plays on the right because he’s a fantastic player and that’s his most effective position, it’s not rocket science.
SC, Belfast (Fascinated by the media circus surrounding what are friendlies with lipstick on)

READ: Lee Carsley and the ‘bizarre psychodrama’ robbing England of Pep Guardiola

Southgate knew you need your Harry Maguires
While Gareth Southgate didn’t win anything, he was more successful in winning actual games of knockout football than any manager in recent history despite some actually decent managers trying their hand. How about thinking about why that was for a start, what did he do that others didn’t? (rather than constant knee-jerk reactions to each solitary game)

Firstly, he was pretty good at ignoring the fans and media frenzy to play whoever was in form for their club. Similarly, he didn’t drop players who had a bad run for their club. And additionally, he didn’t throw players under the bus. He built a core of players and remained loyal to them. Some use this as a stick to beat him with but it was interesting to hear one mailboxer say they missed Maguire yesterday. That core of players was Southgate’s biggest asset and unfortunately some key ones were not available (Shaw) or injured (Kane) at the wrong times.

England’s biggest problem is that the only England matches that are taken seriously are tournament football (which doesn’t include this stupid Nations League malarkey) and the few games before that where players are vying for selection. All other games are glorified friendlies whereby clubs are reluctant to release players and managers are forced to try players they probably didn’t want to. Yet the media still judge the team performance as if every game was a knockout game. I’m not sure if the standard tournament favourites of Germany/Spain/Italy/Frace treat internationals the same way? Does anyone know?

Gareth realised that his best chance of winning anything was by getting a squad together that were used to playing together. When half the team are not used to playing together it’s little surprise that a couple of training sessions before the game isn’t going to make them play like world beaters. Maguire is a perfect example, despite really tough times at Utd he’s rewarded Southgate’s faith with mostly good England performances.

Southgate’s biggest criticism is that he played with the handbrake on. Unfortunately, that is what international football is all about, it’s more about not losing than it is about winning. Greece, Norway and a poor Italy side have won tournaments with relatively poor sides built on defending and not losing. We’d all like to play without the handbrake on but I think the only way you get to this is by having a strong core of players that are used to playing together and the defensive solidity that allows the team to go forward more.

We don’t need to shoehorn the best players into the England team. We need a core of 16-18 players that a manager sticks with and only brings in new players when he has to. As another mailboxer mentioned, the best teams don’t have 5 or 6 flair players, they might have 2 or 3 or even just the one.

Finally, I think Southgate built his team around a core of solid players realising that flair players also come with their deficiencies. The media and the man in the pub think we should build the team around the flair players. We need to pick players to suit a system, not a system to suit the players. Gareth favoured Kane, Walker, Pickford, Stones, Maguire, Rice, Rashford, Shaw, Sterling, Trippier and Henderson. You could criticise all of these players for something but what they have in common is that they are/were solid and dependable – you know what you’re getting from them and a bad game was a 7/10.

Whatever the system a new manager decides on, players like Rice, Mainoo, Maguire, Guehi, Stones should be the first type of names on the team sheet as they are square pegs in square holes. Continue to put the best square pegs in square holes, some of those flair players will still fit but we definitely can’t get too many of Foden, Saka, Grealish, Belligham, TAA, Gordon, Palmer, Watkins, Gomes, Toney in without the team lacking in balance or simply defensive ability.

And some of the ones that don’t make it will be brilliant to have off the bench when we need them.
Jon, Cape Town (I did laugh at someone slating Chelsea for how they fared against a run of teams in an average of 10th place – the longer the season goes on everyone faces teams in an average of 10th place, that’s how maths works buddy and that is exactly what you are measured against)

MORE ON ENGLAND FROM F365:
👉 Ten England internationals who haven’t retired yet but really should
👉 The famous F365 England ladder crowns a new No. 1 and spends a lot of time shrugging uncertainly
👉 Ranking the chances of all 50 uncapped England starters: Newcastle pair in top six

Why England managers fail
Johnny Nic is right to point out the simplistic nature of much of the criticism levelled at England managers. But he then proceeds to suggest an explanation of England’s perennial underachievement which is just as tired and silly. The players aren’t good enough.

Come on, Johnny, a man of your intelligence can surely do better than that. You sound like exactly the pub bore you’re presumably attempting to lampoon. The truth is that England’s lack of trophies is down to a combination of factors, the relative influence of which naturally shifts over the years.

During the Sven era, I would contend our players were certainly good enough but we were held back by a manager with very limited tactical nous. During the Greenwood years, the players were very obviously NOT good enough even though we had a smart, forward-thinking manager. You get the idea.

The odds on any team aligning every single success factor at any given time are vanishingly small. That’s why (as a recent Mailboxer pointed out) Man U have only had two eras of sustained success, Liverpool two/three and most clubs none at all. Looking for catch-all solutions to anything is naive. Life and football are rather more complicated than that.
Matt Pitt

Johnny is right…and wrong
The John Nicholson article on English players almost hit the nail on the head.

Most of England’s players today are overrated by fans and the media.

I have the same attitude he does to English exceptionalism, I even caught myself doing it driving through France, asking myself why they don’t have toll booths for right hand drive cars, before, metaphorically, slapping myself…. why would they!

However, whilst we must accept England players are generally overhyped, it’s important to concede there are a few genuinely ‘world class’ players in the squad. A couple may fall into the ‘arguably’ category, they tend to play for Arsenal, but Trent Alexander Arnold and Jude Bellingham are both ‘in the top drawer’.

However, let’s also acknowledge that when England get a truly great player, certainly from an attacking point of view, they get (by managers, fans and Media alike) dragged down, their flaws highlighted.

Bellingham, in my opinion, is a (for England at least) generational talent, but the criticism aimed at him was unbelievable during the Euros.

Alexander-Arnold is the best player, in his position, in the world and would be an absolute first team starter for Brazil, Italy, France, Spain etc, but in England it’s ‘he can’t defend’ (he can defend, he’s actually pretty good at it, just not to Maldini levels).

Matt Le Tissier, before he bought shares in a tinfoil hat company, won 8 caps, EIGHT! And, it’s widely accepted Glenn Hoddle should have had more than 53 appearances.

You can go even further back with Len Shackleton and his 5 caps, waiting 5 years between caps 3 and 4, with selectors telling the press ‘we play at Wembley, not the London palladium’.

The point is, this is nothing new.

English fans and media and even managers, build up the mediocre and attack the truly great.

I wonder how many times those reading this have watched Spain, Argentina and the like, seen a player and thought ‘really? They start for them!’ (Admit it you did it when you saw Cucurella at left back for Spain didn’t you).

This is largely because other nations don’t try and ‘shoehorn’ all their best players into the team. They pick a formation based around one or two of their best players and fit everyone else around that. Playing players in their actual positions.

England need to do more of that, even if it means playing Ron Benson of Plymouth Argyle.

They’re still unlikely to win anything and fans, managers and especially the media will continue to have unrealistic expectations.

All in games that most think are now an annoying distraction… but that’s for another mailbox.
Graham

Player burn-out and the American models
I love the false equivalents.

After the potential/never-in-a-million-years strike of football players based on 0.1% of players feeling that playing 70 games a year (a la Rodri), I started to hear a load of drivel about the fact that the NFL only play 15-25 games a year and yet the NFL makes more money than football or some such rubbish.

It of course misses the point that AMERICAN football is only played in the USA and therefore players don’t need to worry about international matches. Of course, if the NFL model is the way to go we must also reference that the NFL has grown the sport and revenue by playing games outside of the USA playing not only in the UK but also in Mexico, Germany and Brazil, when the premier league floated this the country went into melt down.

After football/soccer the most popular sport in terms of how many countries it played in would be basketball which also has credible international tournaments.

So how many games are played in the NBA season, well 82 in the standard season then up to 110 additional games for teams that get to the end of the play offs (or so my 10mins research stated), in addition to this there are all-star games as well as the Olympics and World cup every four years.

I know people will say basketball is “non-contact” but it is a fast pace game with lots of twisting and turning so I assume the players get injured and tired.

To be honest, I’m not sure how equivalent it is to compare, however I’d love for one of your readers from the USA to state if they think football/soccer players play a lot of games compared to basketball players?

The few live basketball games I’ve seen there seems to be bigger squads and way more substitutions, surely this is how football/soccer will evolve instead of pretending we will regress to playing less games?
Paul K, London

My club’s bigger than your club…
MAW, you baited me in, and I am getting reeled in like your favorite fish. Because GODDAMN the irony of saying that if you ever brag about winning a cup like United did, you will feel like a Spurs fan, while you brag about winning nothing as an Arsenal fan.

Let’s keep it clear, you will never feel that cause you haven’t won ANYTHING. Hence you are EXACTLY like Spurs mate. You say cups aren’t how to define how United is still in 2024 bigger and doing better than Arsenal, then how else do we define bigger and better between your “World Class” Arsenal and my “Absolute Rubbish” Manchester United??

Cups won since Arteta? Not even close
Cups won before Arteta? Still not close
Profits? Not even close
Revenue? Not even close
Social Media? No comparison
Fans? Reach? Worldwide impact? Not even close

Even on the stupidest metric, we are bigger.

So please MAW, other than “vibes”, the only thing that Arsenal EXCEL in is NOT WINNING. You know who holds the RECORD for most 2nd place finishes/first losers? Your beloved Arsenal, because you lot are specialists in failure as I recall someone saying. So yeah, we may be absolute trash in playing football for a decade, but in that time we still managed a few cups and a mini European trophy, while you lot have won a few FA cups under Wenger, and ONE cup in 5 years and ZERO cups in 4 years under Arteta.

But carry on, whatever helps you think of Arsenal as “big”. Leicester are bigger mate, at least they won some trophies that matter and did not cry on about a “process” for half a decade. Chelsea & Liverpool are bigger with a EPL title and European CL in the last decade. Even Moyes/WHU won a 3rd rate European Trophy. The only club that you can mix around is with your beloved Spurs who have won 1 less trophy than you in the Arteta Era. United may be shit, but we will not be called shit by a club that is absolutely beneath us 😉

Cheers and have a wonderful day.
A