Gareth hands international boost to Cats’ Patterson
Gareth Southgate has given Anthony Patterson a boost with his most recent comments.
The England manager concluded that he may need to startselectingfromtheChampionship in future because of what he claims is the decreasing number of English players in the Premier League.
"Thenumbersarethenumbers. They're not going up," said Southgate. "It has been around 32%, but that's down from 35% when I took over and 38% in the years before so the graph is clear - there's no argumentaboutthat.Twenty-eight percenthashappenedinacouple of weekends in the last few weeks.
"I think it won't hit us necessarily in the next 18 months, but if there are 66 players each week, it does mean that positionally you have to add in whatthatmeansaswell.Ithink we've got four left-footed leftbacksinthePremierLeagueat the moment so we will have to startlookingintheChampionship or elsewhere."
The news that Southgate could start looking at the Championship more often for players could be good news for Sunderland stopper Anthony Patterson, who was called up to the Under-21s set-up earlier this week.
Despite being 22, the Black Cats stopper is eligible to play for the Young Lions as he was youngenoughwhenqualifying began for this summer’s European Championships.
Patterson has started all 38 league games for Sunderland thisseason,leadingtoreported interest from Premier League clubs such as Leicester and Wolves with rumours of a full England call-up also swirling.
*Sunderland attacker Jewison Bennette has been called up for international duty by Costa Rica.
Theyoungsterplayedinthe winter World Cup out in Qatar last year, but has only featured sporadically for Sunderland this season.
The winger came off the bench towards the end of Sunderland’s1-1drawintheChampionship against Luton Town onSaturdaybeforemakingthe Costa Rica squad hours later.
Bennette and his teammates face two CONCACAF Nations League games against Martinique and Panama on March 25 and March 29 respectively before returning to WearsideforSundrland’sclash against Burnley on March 31 at Turf Moor.