The England Ladder returns: Gordon, Hall, Scott big winners, Palmer and the old guard sliding away

A new international tournament cycle can mean only one thing: a new England Ladder! We know you’re all just as excited as we are.

Of course, the fact we’re now pointing towards a tournament that’s still well over a year-and-a-half away means a lot of changes from the last pre-World Cup Ladder, which was looking at a tournament only a matter of weeks away. That’s our excuse, anyway, for how many of the numbers in brackets from that last Ladder now look absolutely mental. They were about a whole different tournament, guys.

A lot of them really were still just wrong, mind. But we move.

There are, inevitably, plenty of changes given the time that has passed, the shift in focus, and just how many games England have actually played since we last did one of these. But there is absolutely not a new number one even as we enter the brave new era of what literally everyone is already calling Tuchelball 2.0.

 

1) Harry Kane (1)
The naysayers can continue to chunter about The Big Moments and we will continue to insist he has zero actual goals because we are incorrigible scamps, but the simple fact is that Kane was a clear and unquestioned number one here when we did the last pre-World Cup ladder in April, and since then he has scored another 13 England goals.

Just to reiterate: that’s 13 goals for England. In the last six months. There are only five instances in England’s entire history of a single player scoring 12 or more goals in a calendar year, and Kane also has two of the other four.

Kane has, in the last six months, scored more England goals than Trevor Francis, Teddy Sheringham, Sir Stanley Matthews, John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne or Joe Cole scored in the entirety of their distinguished 50-cap-plus careers.

Logically, at the start of a new tournament cycle for the Ladder, a 33-year-old should start to move down the list at least a little bit. Yet he’s never been a clearer number one. Next month he will, barring injury, become England’s most-capped player as well as already being their leading scorer by an increasingly absurd margin.

You can moan about him, but you’ll miss him when he’s gone. He is utterly extraordinary, and entirely irreplaceable.

 

2) Jude Bellingham (7)
And he moved up to number seven in April. And putting him that high was not a straightforward decision despite how insane that now sounds. Absolutely wild now to think that back then there was still a significant school of thought that he shouldn’t go to the World Cup at all. LOL, LMAO, etc.

Scores goals. Creates goals. Changes games. Is as exciting as a Gascoigne and increasingly with the end product of a Kane. But he doesn’t really play the game with the UK media, and none of the Big Journalists really have a crack at getting to be the ghostwriter of his autobiography, so who’s to say how it all balances out really.

 

3) Elliot Anderson (4)
It’s only 15 months since Anderson made his debut. He has now eased past 20 caps and it’s already impossible to imagine that England midfield without him. He’s so quickly made himself indispensable, and it’s hugely to his credit.

An encouraging thing on this break, perhaps a product of his move to a Big Club Environment or perhaps just as simple as a slightly different role in the absence of exhaustion’s Declan Rice, has been Anderson’s willingness to be the late box-breaking runner from midfield. Especially when Kane drops deep for a bit of the ol’ quarterbacking.

We can’t deny that moving him above Rice is provocative and probably a bit of mischief, but there is definitely a sense that while they remain very much Tuchel and pretty much everyone’s first-choice midfield pairing, that it’s Anderson we’ll see more of over the next couple of international breaks and thus he’s the man who will come to feel the more essential.

 

4) Declan Rice (2)
But let’s not muck about. A Rice who is fit and hasn’t played 4000 games of football in the last year or so will remain a first-choice member of this England team and quite rightly so. The only real difference between Anderson/Rice and Kane/Bellingham ahead of them in this list is the genuine emergence of others who are close to their level.

Rice and Anderson are first choice, sure, but your Alex Scotts and Myles-Lewis Skellys are starting to feel closer than anyone does to the eye-catching superstars of England’s attack.

 

5) Anthony Gordon (10)
The absence of Marcus Rashford through injury gave Gordon the chance to nudge himself into the inked-in certainties in Tuchel’s first-choice XI, and he has absolutely done so. Goals in each of the first three games of the break meant his absence for a Wembley cakewalk against Czechia felt like exactly what it was: a rest for Gordon and a look at someone else.

His pace is such a potent weapon in an attack with as many facets as England’s has, and it does feel like – properly deployed and harnessed as it now is – that is of more value than Rashford’s broader strokes.

 

6) Marc Guehi (5)
He should probably be higher, to be honest. The evidence is pretty clear. Played every minute of England’s World Cup campaign after the Croatia game. Started every game of this international break. Came off just past the hour against Czechia in game four, and that was very obviously a rest for a job well done.

Basically we’ve punished him here for the sloppiness of that performance against Spain. Which is wrong of us and outside the remit of the Ladder, because where Guehi sits in Tuchel’s thoughts is abundantly clear.

But we can and will lash out because while Guehi is a very good defender and we have no real problem with him, there is something nevertheless still so irritating about how for all those years England had genuinely world-class centre-backs but not enough else and now England have genuinely world-class everything else but not enough centre-backs.

Fundamentally the issue is this: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Marc Guehi, England international. But there is something slightly wrong with Marc Guehi, certain and entirely unchallenged England starter. He’s good, but he’s not so good that there should be no real challenge to his starting spot.

 

7) Jordan Pickford (3)
Thomas Tuchel says he’s still his No. 1 and we believe him. Tuchel also said he was going to give James Trafford two games in this international break as deserved reward for his recent form, and he was as good as his word. Trafford played the first two, and then Pickford came back.

That’s all fine, and there’s no actual dissonance here. Everything that happened is what Tuchel said would happen and all of it can absolutely be true at the same time.

But leaving Pickford out of meaningful, competitive games for which he as available also does feel like something that simply wouldn’t have happened at any other point in the last eight years.

He may still be Tuchel and England’s No. 1, but the selection choices made this week inevitably bring the certainty of that position into question. For the first time really since establishing himself as England’s goalkeeper at Russia 2018, he’s facing meaningful pressure for his place.

 

8) Bukayo Saka (6)
We’re pretty sure he’s still in Tuchel’s first-choice front four, but we’re no longer absolutely certain of it. He just isn’t the best version of himself at this time, and despite his two goals in that very weird game against Croatia’s old men in front of Croatia’s children, just doesn’t look the part the way Kane, Bellingham and Gordon currently do.

Morgan Rogers having a very good night on the right against Czechia doesn’t help, either.

 

9) Ezri Konsa (9)
If Thomas Tuchel was picking his ideal team for a big game, it would still be Konsa alongside Marc Guehi, wouldn’t it? Which is fine, we guess.

 

10) Lewis Hall (17)
A big winner from this break. Primarily because of his own excellent performances across England’s three post-Spain wins, but there’s no denying that his pre-existing relationship with Anthony Gordon helps. If Gordon pins down the left wing spot as we think he now has, that helps Hall’s case at left-back enormously.

But it also does him absolutely no harm that he was just as good against Czechia at Wembley with no Gordon in sight.

It seems like an awfully long time since England’s full-back positions have been properly, decisively locked in by someone. Hall now looks closer than most have managed in recent years.

 

11) Reece James (8)
Picked up a hamstring injury just before the international break in gallingly on-brand fashion. Also does seem more and more like he’s a midfielder for Chelsea, which probably doesn’t help him at England level where a far more conspicuous hole exists at right-back.

The full-back positions are the hardest to be certain about at this time, but we’re going to say that nobody quite did enough on this break to decisively unseat James, who we still just about think would be the first name Tuchel would jot down at right-back, all else being equal.

But this is comfortably for now the most tentative first XI pick.

 

12) Morgan Rogers (12)
A player for whom an awful lot has changed but in England terms… almost nothing has changed.

Six months ago he was an excellent player performing consistently for Aston Villa but due to the sheer scale of the competition for places sat just outside a pure first-choice England XI.

Now he’s an excellent player performing consistently for Chelsea but due to the sheer scale of the competition for places sits just outside a pure first-choice England XI.

 

13) James Trafford (21)
We thank Tuchel for his service here. Normally, after a competitive-games interlull, where back-up goalkeepers sit in the hierarchy comes down to wishy-washy stuff like “Which one was number 13 and which one was number 23?”

Now it’s “Which one got given two full games, including against the world champions, as a reward for his excellent recent form?” That would be Trafford, then.

 

14) Nico O’Reilly (11)
We find it slightly surprising that Nico O’Reilly only has 13 England caps. Feels like he’s been around a lot more than that, doesn’t it?

But this was a disastrous international break for his hopes of adding significantly more to that number in the months ahead. He made a disastrous and costly error in the defeat against Spain, then got injured, then had to watch Lewis Hall be pretty much faultlessly brilliant at left-back for the next three, much easier, games.

 

15) Alex Scott (46)
The injury is gutting, especially as it seems certain to keep him out of the next international break as well. Because that performance against Croatia was all class. Scott just looks absolutely built for international football and were it not for that injury this would feel like a break where he moved himself decisively ahead of your Lewis-Skellys, Whartons, Garners, Mainoos et al to be next cab off the rank in the absence of Rice or Anderson.

And there’s a fair chance that one of them will be absent here and there, given their workloads.

Now, though, all those other players have a chance to make their own impression while Scott nurses his injury and Bournemouth curse Tuchel’s decision to play Scott despite knowing he had a niggle.

 

16) Dean Henderson (14)
We’re pretty confident that once fit again he is at worst England’s third-choice keeper (sorry, Jason Steele). James Trafford getting a couple of games in this break does also mean that once fit again Henderson is also at best England’s third-choice keeper.

 

17) John Stones (22)
He was as low as 22 back in April because injury had forced him out of that last full international break before the World Cup.

Injury has now forced him out of the first full international break after the World Cup.

In between, he played a major role in England reaching the World Cup semi-finals. He played every minute of both the quarter-final and semi-final in the States.

Back in April, we were still pretty certain that Tuchel was clear that a fully fit Stones was definitely in his preferred tournament squad. But that’s because the tournament was only a couple of months away. Where does a 32-year-old, still injury-blighted Stones sit when the next tournament is 20 months away?

We don’t know. We suspect it’s still ‘in the squad, please’ but it’s a very, very tentative choice at this time. There’s a decisive swing one way or the other coming over the next Ladder or two, you’d think.

 

18) Marcus Rashford (15)
There was no ‘load management’ chicanery with Rashford’s injury, but that won’t necessarily ease his or Tuchel’s frustration at his absence. Rashford might be blameless for the chance he handed to Anthony Gordon, but it’s a chance he gave him and one that has been pretty decisively taken by the man who also took his spot at Barcelona.

 

19) Myles Lewis-Skelly (43)
Significant minutes for Lewis-Skelly in this Rice-less window are one thing; what’s surely bigger is the role clarity that Tuchel has given him. Twice he was on the field when England’s starting left-back was withdrawn. Twice it was James Garner asked to fill in at left-back despite Lewis-Skelly appearing to be the more obvious fit.

Pretty obvious what Tuchel is saying with those choices, and the fact his club and international boss appear to be pretty aligned on where precisely his future lies has to be good news.

Getting a stupid booking that rules him out of the Croatia game in the next break is really irritating, though, because the competition for those midfield spots is so fierce. Even Rice has suffered from, by necessity, giving others a chance this month. Lewis-Skelly has just done the same thing from a far weaker position for far dafter reasons.

 

20) Djed Spence (31)
What a p*sser of a time to get injured. The unlikeliest of World Cup heroes, Spence’s dazzling rise to prominence within the England squad in the summer has been followed by an absence barely remarked upon at all.

We’re not dismissing or forgetting all that happened in the summer, and we’re certain Tuchel won’t either, but with Spence now also operating outside the Premier League goldfish bowl there exists a real danger that the World Cup becomes a freakish confluence of circumstance for Spence and England.

We also think there’s a kind of poetry to that, though, for Spence to spend six inexplicable weeks looking like one of the very best players in the world and then never doing so again.

 

21) Kobbie Mainoo (19)
By sheer happenstance, Mainoo’s necessity for the management of load appears to cover the precise three weeks of the interlull and he’s expected to return to Manchester United action against Tottenham.

That’s all fine and dandy, but he is heading down a dangerous Cole Palmer road here with a manager who places high importance on what he sees of his players in camp rather than on club duty, and might not like where it ends. That England midfield no longer looks quite so short of acceptable options as it once did.

 

22) Eberechi Eze (28)
Has had an awful lot of chances for England now without ever quite delivering the end product you need to keep yourself ahead of a large pack of contenders for those attacking positions around the Kane-Bellingham axis.

His second half against Czechia at Wembley was probably his best 45 minutes for England, but he still feels too much like a player contributing intangibles while your Kanes, Bellinghams, Sakas and the Gordons of this world deliver solid, measurable, definitive numbers to go with the good vibes.

Until such time as Tottenham claim independence and move into international football, Eze might be a bit stuck.

 

23) Dominic Calvert-Lewin (34)
Two brief substitute appearances meant he got no real chance on the pitch during this break to stake his claim, but the good news for Calvert-Lewin is that while he (and everyone else) might remain no closer to even threatening to usurp Kane as the starting No. 9 he does appear to have a bigger gap between himself and any other challenger than has been the case for a while.

There’s generally been a logjam from the Forgotten Generation of England strikers competing for the crumbs off Harry Kane’s plate. But right now Calvert-Lewin appears to have a pretty clear run given Ollie Watkins has joined Ivan Toney out of sight and out of mind and Dominic Solanke is these days focusing mainly on baffling AI slop where he pictures himself in a Spurs kit he never wore sat in a tree sharpening the shaft rather than head of an arrow. Which was, we assume accidentally, actually a pretty decent summary of his season to date.

 

24) Jarell Quansah (35)
Look, here’s one we got wrong. Quansah has become Tuchel’s Swiss Army Knife. Every squad needs one. A doer of jobs at full-back who very, very occasionally even gets a game in his actual position of centre-back as he did against Czechia.

He did very well, too, albeit in a pretty easy game, but really it does little for us other than muddy the waters of precisely how Tuchel ranks his assorted centre-back options.

 

25) Trent Alexander-Arnold (49)
Look at that April number there. But here’s the thing: that was right, in April. We’re the first to hold our hands up and admit when we’ve f*cked it (Conor Gallagher? FFS) but what you have to remember is that the April Ladder was all about who would be in the World Cup squad, and by then it was pretty clear Alexander-Arnold would not be.

But he’s back now, and has played two games as a right-back of all things. None of that ‘give him the number eight shirt and start him in midfield’ caper that Gareth Southgate tried in his midlife crisis at Euro 2024.

We have to look at the data and consider for now the possibility that Tuchel simply sees Trent as a perfect match-up specifically against Czechia, for it is still an awful long time since he’s played for England against anyone other than them. But we’re going to tentatively at this point suggest that’s just a coincidence and that we’ll see something of him again against Croatia and/or Spain next month.

 

26) Trevoh Chalobah (30)
Played the full 90 against Czechia in Prague while Ezri Konsa, Jarell Quansah and Jarrad Branthwaite sat on the bench, which seemed like an interesting choice that had significant Ladder implications.

Then didn’t appear for a single minute in either of the two subsequent games as Konsa returned against Croatia and Quansah got the nod from the start against Czechia at Wembley with Branthwaite coming off the bench.

Sometimes, Thomas, you do not make this easy. He is, at the very least, firmly part of the conversation among England’s centre-back options.

 

27) Tino Livramento (29)
Genuinely might be England’s most injury-ravaged right-back which, in a world where Reece James exists, is f*cking mental.

 

28) James Garner (39)
Is he the sexiest midfield option England have? No, he is not. Does he make the squad when absolutely everyone is available? Doubtful.

Did he do anything at all to let anyone down when thrice called upon from the bench this month? Absolutely not. He will continue to be there or thereabouts, and Tuchel clearly trusts him, but is already odds-on to be the player we completely forget about when doing the next Ladder.

 

29) Jarrad Branthwaite (RE)
Hasn’t had the career trajectory he or pretty much anyone else imagined a couple of years ago with injuries proving a significant ballache for the giant Everton centre-back, but after more than two years of increasingly frustrating membership he’s finally out of the One-Cap Wonder club after a couple of appearances off the bench this month.

Now that Anthony Gardner, Nathaniel Chalobah, Steven Caulker and Ryan Shawcross are finally in the rear-view mirror, the only way is up.

 

30) Morgan Gibbs-White (40)
Just increasingly looks like he’s going to be a very, very unlucky England player. He is, obviously, brilliant. But even when it comes to a squad place he is competing with players whose brilliance is perhaps more obvious still.

A late but undoubtedly deserved call-up to this squad resulted in appearances in all four games. But no real time to show anyone what he can unquestioningly do in any of them.

At some point we’d love to see what he could do with a real chance, but you really are wishing injuries upon a couple of England’s best players to make that happen.

The numbers for Gibbs-White tell a story. Across the last two-and-a-bit years he’s won 10 caps but has never made a starting XI and his entire England career amounts to 136 minutes. Only once has he played more than 20 minutes in an England game, and that was half-an-hour in the Game That Shall Not Be Named against Senegal.

Poor sod.

 

31) Rio Ngumoha (NE)
Tuchel absolutely did not have to give the 18-year-old a couple of appearances off the bench late on in the wins over Czechia, just as he did not have to give Ngumoha 45 minutes of a pre-World Cup friendly when he wasn’t part of the actual World Cup squad. But he did, and that means something. Very obvious that Tuchel likes what he sees here, and the whole modus operandi of the Ladder means we should not and must not ignore that.

 

32) Cole Palmer (23)
We don’t need to speculate here, do we? We have Tuchel’s own words, and they are couched and cautious but ultimately damning. On Palmer’s latest England withdrawal, the coach said:

“For sure. It is a missed opportunity. He misses too many opportunities. I don’t blame him for it. It is just a fact.

“He misses way too many camps with injuries, and I only want to rely on what I witness and see within in my team, and for that you have to be in camp.

“And if you’re not in camp, there is a next level to impress that you cannot achieve because you can only do it when you are actually on the pitch with me. So yes, it is a missed opportunity.”

We also don’t even need to go just on Tuchel’s words here. We have deeds as well. He has left Palmer out before. He has shown faith and loyalty to those who turn up at every camp.

Palmer is, obviously, an excellent player. Tuchel and England could use him. But they have no shortage of players who can do what he does and who don’t need quite so much ‘load management’ (what woke nonsense! In our day we just called it ‘managing workload’!) in a Europe-less club season.

His absence from the final World Cup squad was a bit of a surprise, but look where we had him in April. It wasn’t a seismic shock. The doubts were there before that exclusion and they’re only mounting.

 

33) Rico Lewis (44)
It was after an awful lot of pull-outs, sure, but he ended up back in the full England squad and that is a thing that has happened.

 

34) Noni Madueke (32)
Obviously would have climbed significantly higher than that 32 at various points on a Ladder during the actual World Cup. But now finds himself out of favour with club and country after an unconvincing time of it in the States.

 

35) Jason Steele (NE)
England’s, England’s No. 4, England’s, No. 4.

 

36) Adam Wharton (24)
Sometimes we’re allowed to let our own biases in, as a little treat. Even down at a lowly 36, Wharton’s place this high is a triumph of our own hope over expectation. It’s increasingly clear that Wharton’s unorthodox brilliance is just not what Tuchel is looking for in a midfielder for his system and, reluctantly, we get it. Whatever front four England pick is now so blessed with menace that the job of the midfield two is more water-carrier than line-breaker.

 

37) Phil Foden (27)
Non-zero chance at 26 years old that his England career is already over.

 

38) Jarrod Bowen (25)
We’d bloody love a Championship outfield player to get in the England squad, and do feel that Bowen has been a bit unlucky even before West Ham’s relegation with the chances he’s had for England. But just doesn’t feel like it’s going to be necessary for Tuchel to turn to Bowen while he remains outside the top flight. Next season could be a different matter, of course.

 

39) Dominic Solanke (26)
It still really doesn’t take an awful lot for an English Premier League striker to get themselves back into this squad, you know. But Solanke has also been perhaps the most conspicuously rotten of Tottenham’s many rotten performers this season, so it will need to have been a transformative few weeks on the training ground. The point stands, though: the chance is absolutely there.

 

40) Harvey Barnes (38)
Has played for England this year and made a decent start to the season with Newcastle. But does just have the feel of one of those unfortunate sorts for whom a proper international career just doesn’t quite happen for whatever reason.

READ: Ranking the chances of all 52 uncapped England starters, with Manchester United man at 15)

 

41. Dan Burn (18)
42. Josh King (NE)
43. Ethan Nwaneri (RE)
44. Liam Delap (RE)
45. Ollie Watkins (33)
46. Will Lankshear (NE)
47. Harry Maguire (20)
48. Luke Shaw (41)
49. Fikayo Tomori (36)
50. Phil Neville (50)