MARTIN KEOWN’S
BIG MATCH ANALYSIS
I LIKe the way Marcus Rashford runs at people and asks questions of defenders. All the best players — Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi — made their mark as wingers and Rashford now just needs to drift a bit more into central areas and express himself more by coming off the touchline. I think he’ll be a top player and they don’t stay fixed for too long out wide. Our wingers seemed very fixed against Slovenia and we could have interchanged more. Outside left should only be his position at the start of a game when it comes to the World Cup. MIDFIELD SLOWDOWN enGLAnD have got a real problem with moving the ball through midfield quickly and it needs to be sorted. Gareth Southgate will be concerned. he needs to take Jordan henderson back to the drawing board. When the Liverpool captain receives the ball, it just seems that he takes too long to deliver it forward and a lot of problems come through the slow development of play. henderson and midfield partner eric Dier need to learn to let the ball roll across their bodies and play a quicker pass. Despite harry Kane’s late goal, we’re not getting the ball into him early enough as it stands and he is central to england’s hopes in Russia. TROUBLE ON THE COUNTER UP against better opponents next summer, england could be in real trouble on the counter-attack. even against Slovenia there were cases of the opposition making good runs and england defenders failing to track them. When we lost the ball and they got behind our midfield, they had players making runs and we should have been going with them. Better teams will punish that. HART IN THE SPOTLIGHT theRe is a lot of scrutiny on goalkeeper Joe hart and he got away with one when Slovenia were denied a first-half penalty. Southgate has backed hart but he now has Stoke’s Jack Butland providing strong competition. If hart had given a penalty away he might have been on borrowed time. he’s very lucky. But credit to the West ham goalkeeper, late in the game he was brave enough to take a ball in the face for the england cause. SOUTHGATE’S SHADOWS COnGRAtULAtIOnS to Southgate. he arrived in difficult circumstances and he’s got the job done in terms of qualification, but england need more goals and more creativity next summer. the manager must try to get the best out of some of these players who are a pale shadow of what we see at club level. the likes of Kyle Walker, Rashford and Kane are not really performing to the same level for england and the challenge now is to get our best players performing as they do for their clubs. We have not yet seen that under Southgate. he is unbeaten in competitive games after a year but england have not scored enough goals.