Gareth Southgate has named a provisional 33-man squad for the 2024 European Championships. He needs to cut it down to 26 players by June 7. The squad is attack-heavy and looks like the obvious area for the England manager to prune. There has been some speculation over the place of Manchester City attacker Jack Grealish and when Southgate was pressed on it, he was non-committal.
England manager Gareth Southgate has refused to confirm Manchester City attacker Jack Grealish’s place in the final Euro 2024 squad.
Grealish is one of 11 forwards named in Southgate’s provisional 33-man squad and that area, as well as defense – where there are also 11 players – has been pinpointed as an obvious position for cuts when Southgate has to trim down the squad to 26.
Speaking ahead of England’s warm-up match against Bosnia & Herzegovina, Southgate was non-committal on Grealish’s place.
“I don’t think we’re defining that just yet,” he said.
“I think we know where we’re likely to be. It’s hard to be quite so specific because we keep sitting down and saying: ‘OK, if it’s this or this …’ But then somebody else in the room says: ‘Yeah, but what about if we lose that player there, or that one doesn’t come through with his injury? Do we need another one in this area?’ Time is our friend this week. It’s worth using the time.
“There are a lot of good players in that area of the pitch and they are all competing. We think we know who the best have been across the season. What we don’t totally know is how many we need to take or how many we can allow ourselves to take because of the cover we might need in other positions as well.”
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Southgate admitted that despite Grealish not playing as much for Premier League champions City, he knew the kind of unique qualities that the forward could bring.
“He has been really bright and he loves being here. He’s had a good energy about his training,” Southgate explained.
“This season he has not played as much. I’m sure he would have liked that to be different but we know the qualities he can bring. He is a player we enjoy working with and a character we enjoy having within the group.”
One area where there are unlikely to be too many cuts is in the midfield, with just seven players in the squad including the uncapped Curtis Jones and Adam Wharton.
“There are a few different options,” Southgate said of that position.
“Whatever they are is going to be slightly new, different, because we are talking about a player who doesn’t play there regularly or a young player who is coming in there to play. We are actually looking forward to working through that.”
The real talking point of the midfield selection was Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold who made his name as a right-back but has been developing as a central midfielder.
“In the last year or so by playing there for his club he has got more comfortable with receiving the ball in tight areas,” Southgate said of the Liverpool man.
“It’s not quite the same as receiving with the touchline to one side. The pitch geography is a little bit different.
“But it’s the quality on the ball. That’s why we have tried it previously because we felt he could offer something that at that stage we didn’t have.”
Southgate also confirmed that Grealish’s club team-mate John Stones will miss the Bosnia game as well as Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon of Newcastle United.