Watkins and Bowen in England squad but Mount is overlooked
Ollie Watkins and Jarrod Bowen have been rewarded for their impressive club form with recalls to the England squad but Gareth Southgate has found no space for Raheem Sterling or Mason Mount.
The England manager’s selection for a friendly against Australia on Friday week and a Euro 2024 qualifier against Italy on 17 October includes John Stones, who has not played since the Community Shield on 6 August because of a hip problem, though the defender returned to the bench for Manchester City’s victory over RB Leipzig on Wednesday.
The forward Callum Wilson and playmaker Eberechi Eze are injured, helping to clear a path for Watkins and Bowen. Southgate watched Watkins score a hat-trick for Aston Villa against Brighton last Saturday. Bowen has scored five goals this season, including one in each of his past two games, against Liverpool and Sheffield United.
This is a rare occasion on which Mount has not been selected by Southgate
when fit, though the midfielder only recently returned from injury for Manchester United. Bukayo Saka has been named in the squad but is an injury doubt and Southgate said the forward was still being assessed in the run-up to Arsenal’s game against Manchester City on Sunday.
There is no recognised left-back in the squad in the absence of the injured Ben Chilwell and Luke Shaw. Kieran Trippier and Levi Colwill are options.
Southgate said of Watkins: “You can’t just go on recency bias when you are looking at selection but he is in good form and is coming in on a high. He’s been with us before. We know his character, we know his personality – he’s a good guy around the group.”
Southgate said he had not spoken to Sterling before naming this squad, as he did before selecting his previous one. “We’ve been happy with the wide players and the performances in the last four games in particular and the two in March,” he said. “The team are playing really well so clearly there is some stability there. We have added Jarrod Bowen in those wide areas. He’s scored five in seven games, he’s playing really well and with the Australia game there’s the opportunity to learn some different things.”
A day after Fifa announced that the 2030 World Cup would be played on three continents and across six countries, Southgate sounded unimpressed with the plan. Asked whether the decision had been taken without player welfare in mind, he said: “I’m not sure
what they’ve got in mind for that really. I shall enjoy an invite to Buenos Aires as a TV pundit if that’s the plan.”
Southgate spoke of his opposition to VAR days after Liverpool had a goal wrongly disallowed against Tottenham. “We’re still not sure if the Jesse Lingard goal that knocked us out of a semifinal was legit or not, so I don’t like it,” he said, referring to a disallowed Lingard goal against the Netherlands in a 2019 Nations League semi-final. “I think we should just accept referees’ decisions but I also know we’re unlikely to go back to a world where we don’t have technology as part of that decision-making process. It was never going to resolve every issue and I don’t think there is any solution that will achieve that.”