Gareth Barry, Tom Cleverley, Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana, Leon Britton, Jack Cork, Sam Clucas, Ryan Mason, Andrew Surman, Mark Noble, Adam Forshaw, Danny Drinkwater and Dean Marney.
That’s the rather frightening list of English footballers who started Premier League games this weekend in central midfield. Now take away the injured Lallana and Drinkwater and add the benched Eric Dier, and you have the complete list of English central midfielders realistically available to caretaker manager Gareth Southgate. To those who looked at a squad containing just two specialists – Dier and Henderson (yet to play a decisive role for England in 28 attempts) – and wondered who was missing…the answer is nobody. There was nobody missing because there is a chronic shortage.
If Southgate is feeling adventurous (words that make us smile just to write) he can push Dele Alli back into a more withdrawn role, or Wayne Rooney may well choose to play there. After all, who is the England manager to stop him if that’s what he decides? Southgate had another option but he was probably right to ignore that urge; but if the above list tells us anything, it is that England needs a fit Jack Wilshere.
Right now he is being protected by Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe, both in terms of how many minutes he is playing and in his positioning. While Harry Arter and Surman put in the hard yards and the hard tackles, Wilshere is free to work in the hole and on the swivel. Last week against Everton he recorded a rare 100% pass completion rate while at Watford, the goal he should have scored would have been just reward for an impressive 74 minutes. “You can see Jack is a class player, little touches and little things he does,” said Surman. “He’s great to play with. Give him the ball anywhere on the pitch and he will create something.”
It’s that ‘anywhere on the pitch’ that – along __with Wilshere’s noticeable post-hour decline – could be his biggest problem in proving himself beyond Bournemouth. Wilshere’s long-term England future probably lies deeper in central midfield – he knows he will struggle to compete __with Alli, Rooney, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford and others further up the pitch – but Howe has already said that it is not “rocket science” that he can best utilise Wilshere’s talents as a No. 10. He is finally getting minutes, but not where he ultimately needs to play to give any England manager a viable option beyond Henderson and Dier.
The statistic that Wilshere has not completed 90 Premier League minutes in almost two years has been gleefully cited rather a lot in recent weeks, but it’s worth remembering that it was more recently in June 2015 that Wilshere last played a whole game for his country. And he was brilliant, scoring two goals in Slovenia from the base of a midfield also featuring Henderson and Fabian Delph. It’s that Wilshere we crave and it’s that Wilshere who is undoubtedly superior to excellent but ultimately ‘not quite’ midfielders like Cork and Noble.
Wilshere will have his naysayers until he proves he can play 90 minutes. And then another 90 minutes. And then another 90 minutes. But what’s clear is that there is a space in that England squad if the legs become as willing as the heart and mind. When that happens, maybe he could petition Howe to let him loose with his full repertoire.
Sarah Winterburn