Gareth stumbles on experienced final 23

IT HAS been slow and steady and nobody can quite understand how he has done it.

But when he unveils his final 23 for Russia, Gareth Southgate will have turned the only collection of homegrown waifs and strays able to get a kick in the greatest league in the world into a Premier League select XI.

There is a miserable lack of numbers that an England manager has to choose from nowadays, but 23 names seem to have bubbled up to the top which contain some genuine world-class pedigree.

Leaving the goalkeeping situation aside, Southgate’s 20 outfield players are likely to include five from Tottenham, four each from Liverpool and Manchester United and three from Manchester City.

It is as if the top teams in the Premier League have come together under the banner of the Three Lions.

In total, 20 of the squad Southgate is likely to pick will have played Champions League football. In the past two seasons, the players can count 127 appearances in REPORTS the continent’s elite competition between them. Not just bit-part players, then. Suddenly, in that context, you start to wonder if England do have a team going to the World Cup for something more than just making up the numbers. Southgate will not finalise his 23 until after the season but the England manager’s intentions can be anticipated fairly consistently, with the only question remaining over whether he will trust in Jack Wilshere’s physical fitness or look to blood Ruben Loftus-Cheek in anticipation of future challenges. Southgate is a man who likes to keep his cards close to his chest but already he is beginning to let the cat out of the bag – inadvertently checking in seven names on to the flight when explaining his attacking options after the 1-1 draw with Italy on Tuesday. “I have a problem because I have Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Raheem Sterling, Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy and Alex OxladeChamberlain,” said Southgate when discussing the challenge to Dele Alli. “There is a huge choice I have to make, although I don’t foresee a scenario where those guys don’t come to Russia with us.” That glimpse into England’s anticipated manifest will come as the biggest relief to OxladeChamberlain, whose move away from Arsenal to Liverpool seems to have been rewarded with a return to the squad, having missed out on Euro 2016.

The Champions League football on offer at Anfield appears to be the key, with Southgate packing his squad with players used to playing at the very highest level.

Past England managers have quaintly cast their nets wide when it comes to filling the plane.

Compared to Southgate’s tally of 16, Roy Hodgson’s World Cup squad in 2014 drew on only 11 from the top four teams in the Premier League, as did Fabio Capello four years earlier. Sven-Goran Eriksson was blessed with half of the Manchester United team when he took over. But 11 top-four players in 2002 had grown to 14 in 2006 – albeit with players from Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to boot.

Not since that ‘Golden Generation’ of 2006 have England prepared to set off for a tournament with such a collective mentality of knowing each time they play they are expected to win at club level.

It is the sort of mindset that means, even when you have