Ruben Loftus-Cheek? England should have called up a child instead…

The Times’ Chief Correspondent Martin Samuel has gone in two-footed after England *checks notes* won their fourth of four World Cup qualifiers on Saturday.

Yes, it was really quite sh*t but World Cup qualifiers really quite often are. Samuel has a theme…

If the staff at the FA do Secret Santa, we can only hope that whoever gets Thomas Tuchel buys him the latest edition of the Football Yearbook. The one he seems to be working from appears to be dated 2017-18.

Marcus Rashford, Jordan Henderson, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, John Stones in midfield. Some leap forward this turned out to be.

The eagle-eyed among you will spot that only one of those players started against Andorra on Saturday while two others remained on the bench. It’s not quite the ‘gotcha’ that Samuel seems to believe it is.

Pesky fact: Of the 16 England players that actually faced Andorra, ten were 26 or under, so either children or barely professionals in 2017-18.

It’s also worth pointing out that among the players not available to Tuchel were Levi Colwill (22), Adam Wharton (21), Cole Palmer (23) and Jude Bellingham (22). They were all young teenagers in 2017.

So ‘it is as though English football has remained frozen since the years Tuchel was most engaged with it as a club coach’ is seven shades of absolute bullsh*t from Tuchel. We all laughed at the recall of Ruben Loftus-Cheek but it was far harder to think of an English player starting in the Premier League who should have been called up instead.

Apart from the outcome, which was pretty much a given, the one success of Saturday’s win against Andorra was Elliot Anderson’s performance in deep central midfield. Except Tuchel had already said that this role – No6, as it is now known – would have been occupied by Stones, were it not for injury.

Didn’t say that though, did he? He said: “There is not one pivotal, classic, deep number six. Except maybe John Stones, who fits this characteristic.” Which is true. Did he say he would start v Andorra? Did he balls.

‘Injury was a factor, but Loftus-Cheek has not been attracting the sort of eye-catching notices that would make his late call-up the obvious decision,’ writes Samuel, who puts this down to ‘Tuchel coming from outside the English game’.

We agree that the Loftus-Cheek call was left-field, but what was the alternative? A comprehensive list of non-injured English central midfielders who have started in the Premier League this season reads like this: Elliot Anderson, Marcus Tavernier, Sean Longstaff, Declan Rice, James Garner, Tim Iroegbunam, Archie Gray, Alex Scott, James Ward-Prowse, Curtis Jones, Will Hughes, Jordan Henderson, Josh Laurent and Jack Hinshelwood.

With the possible exception of Jones, we’re not seeing a compelling case for anybody not named Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

But Samuel has an idea…and it involves Arsenal’s 15-year-old Max Dowman, who is not a central midfielder but shut up, right. What a load of absolute wibble.

During his brief time as England manager Terry Venables called up Rio Ferdinand and other exceptional youth players to train with the squad, even though he knew they were not ready for the team. It was for development purposes. Brazil even took a 17-year-old Ronaldo to the 1994 World Cup with no intention of playing him, because they could see he was their future.

Which is of course exactly the same as a 15-year-old Arsenal player with 27 minutes of first-team football.

Samuel names Marcus Rashford – because of course he does – as one player who should not be playing for England in 2025, and then throws Myles Lewis-Skelly into the mix too; his 44 minutes are mysteriously worth less than Dowman’s 27.

It’s a hotch-potch of criticism that ends in utterly bizarre fashion: ‘England haven’t played in Belgrade since winning 4-1 against Yugoslavia on November 11, 1987. A lot has changed since then, of course; although not as much as should have around England.’

Because it’s Martin Samuel and because it’s The Times, we genuinely cannot work out if he believes England could have benefited from a spot of ethnic cleansing, or he thinks Peter Reid is still coming off the bench to replace Bryan Robson.#

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