Liverpool man among five who might be happy to see Gareth Southgate out of England job

England’s players will, in general, be sad to see the end of Gareth Southgate’s reign. We know they like him, we know they were still behind him, and while the end result has been all-too-familiar tournament exit pain, there have been a lot more good moments along the way than they or we generally expect.

So yeah, the players have had good times for England over the last eight years and they’ll miss Gareth.

But not all of them. And we’re not talking here about Jude Bellingham getting a bit exasperated in the final when the blood was up.

No, there are England players who might wish Southgate no specific ill will but will nevertheless be various shades of pleased to see him depart given the boost it may provide for their own prospects.

Here are five such sorts.

Jack Grealish

Fairly obvious, really, but we’ve never let that stop us before and aren’t about to do so now. Can’t really have too many complaints about being left out of England’s squad for Germany after a mediocre domestic season (though he was ‘deeply upset’), but the suspicion nevertheless remains that a less mercurial type might have been less swiftly overlooked.

There were undoubtedly times in Germany when England were in desperate need of the sort of shot in the arm Grealish can provide, and while preferring Eberechi Eze made plenty of sense on their recent club form, it didn’t look quite such a smart choice when sh*t got real.

A more instinctively progressive coach than Southgate – and it’s almost impossible to think the new manager won’t be that – may be more inclined to indulge your Jack Grealishes and less quick to judge.

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James Maddison

And on that theme comes the other immensely-talented-but-never-quite-convinced-Southgate-before-playing-their-way-out-of-the-final-squad attacking option.

More so even than Grealish, there was always a sense that Southgate never truly liked the cut of Maddison’s jib, with the unfortunate unintended outcome that his England career has been a stop-start one.

Maddison has always been a streaky kind of player, and that’s never been Southgate’s thing. He likes to know what he’s getting, and the unintended additional pisser from that initial scepticism has been that Maddison has often been overlooked when enjoying one of his hot streaks before finally convincing the manager to give him a go just as the streak ends or injury hits.

Maddison, like Grealish, certainly isn’t blameless here but had Southgate stayed on, it’s hard to see how the Spurs playmaker could have manoeuvred his way back in. A new manager offers new opportunities.

Ben White

Potentially the most interesting name on this list. More so than with any of the other names here, what happens next is largely up to the player himself. If the departure of Southgate – and presumably also Steve Holland – is enough for White to end his self-imposed England exile, then he becomes an intriguing option for any new manager.

The appeal of replicating Arsenal’s increasingly vital White-Saka right-side combination at England level is obvious and, while White is a very different kind of defender to the now surely done for team-of-the-tournament contender Kyle Walker, he does offer that ability to operate as either a right-back or right centre-back.

Trent Alexander-Arnold

While the Liverpool-based conspiracy theories on x dot com about Southgate deliberately taking Alexander-Arnold purely to exploit him as a scapegoat were obviously unhinged, you could see why Alexander-Arnold himself might be a bit pissed off with his England career under Southgate.

The right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold has been one of the best Premier League right-backs for the last six years now despite the right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold still somehow only being a 25-year-old right-back, but the right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold has only won 29 England caps during that time and only 11 of the right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold’s England caps have come at right-back.

Now Alexander-Arnold is certainly an unconventional right-back, but he’s an outrageously good footballer and Southgate’s utter failure over the last six years to get really anything much out of him at all in an England shirt is one of very few really significant failings on his part.

Southgate bloody loves a right-back, we all know this, but he just couldn’t ever quite work out what to do with England’s – perhaps even the world’s – most obscenely gifted one.

And in the vanishingly unlikely scenario where Jurgen Klopp in fact does decide to sack off his sabbatical to piss about scurrying around Europe trying to get Nations League promotion, then so much the better.

Anthony Gordon

We’re not saying Gareth Southgate is the only football manager in the known charted universe who would have spent a month in Germany looking at an England left-hand side comprising an out-of-position Kieran Trippier and a reluctant Phil Foden and/or Jude Bellingham yet nevertheless decide to give Anthony Gordon three minutes against Slovenia and absolutely nothing else, it’s just that no others spring immediately and readily to mind.

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