England remain flawed going forward - Gareth Southgate must make promising side more than the sum of its parts

The manager will have a lot of thinking time before the World Cup to find a system that gets around the flaws and gets the best out of his talented team

Gareth Southgate has talents like Dele Alli available but must discover a way to get the best from them (Getty)

You wouldn’t have called Gareth Southgate defensive on the issue, but he did look to get on the front foot when asked about England fans booing the team after the goalless first half in Malta.

“I understand why… but I’ve played in so many qualifiers and watched many qualifiers, and I don’t remember there being much free-flowing champagne football. When there’s no space to play, you have to work the opportunities. If Germany had played here, we’d look at the score and see 4-0 and think they’ve done a professional job.”

All typically reasonable responses from the personally impressive Southgate, except, if Germany had played here, you probably wouldn’t have seen such a prosaic job. You would have seen a lot more movement, a lot more integration, a lot more wonder - and, likely, a lot more goals.


 Kane is the undoubted star in Southgate's attacking arsenal 
 (Getty)

While it is obviously unfair to compare England to the well-stocked current world champions - although that level remains the ultimate ambition - and it shouldn’t be forgotten that matches against sides who congest things as much as Malta are always thankless, there does seem to be a fair concern over the attacking fluency in Southgate’s team. It’s similarly difficult to escape the perception that, after an initially bright start, they have gradually dulled in terms of performance.

The issue, then, goes a little beyond this otherwise turgid 4-0 win over Malta. The question is what can be done it; and whether it is that much of a concern.

Like so many debates about England over the last few decades, the root of that question perhaps comes down to something much more fundamental: just how good this team is in terms of attacking talent?

Southgate has a lot of depth, as he mentioned after the game, but what is the actual strength? Where would the England players rank in the world, if you were to perform a rather cursory exercise?


 Sterling has flattered to deceive at international level 
 (Getty)

Well, the man leading the line undoubtedly leads the way, as Harry Kane is probably among the top 10 strikers in the world. That is no exaggeration, given the number of top clubs who want him and the number of goals he guarantees, nor is it an exaggeration to say that he is the modern Alan Shearer - in so many ways.

Ready to stand in for him, Daniel Sturridge has a lot of technical quality at speed but also a lot of injury troubles, while Jamie Vardy has a distinctive pace beyond. Both offer a variety of alternative qualities that is valuable in a tournament.

Behind them and the stand-out quality of Kane is where the issue really lies. It is where there is still mostly potential rather than prime quality. Dele Alli, Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford all of an encouragingly high ceiling in terms of the scope of their talent, but all are still developing - with everything that entails. Dele has been the most consistent in terms of his club football, but another crux issue in all of this is that any player - and particularly an attacker - can look a completely different player depending on the system he is in or the manager he plays under.

This is probably the main challenge for Southgate. If he is not currently in charge of a truly top-quality group of attackers compared to Spain, France, Germany, Argentina, Belgium or Brazil, he is overseeing one with a lot of promise, that lot of progressive managers would love to get their hands on to mould something out of. What could Antonio Conte do with this group, for example, given what he did with a genuinely inferior Italy in Euro 2016?

A promisingly talented side can be so much more than the sum of their parts - in the right system. It isn’t difficult to imagine attackers as impressive as Sterling, Rashford and Dele gloriously interchanging at pace, while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain or Danny Welbeck offer the energy, with Kane then running off them to finish.


 Oxlade-Chamberlain has the ability but is yet to carve out a definitive role for himself 
 (Getty)

Southgate just has to find that system, or evolve one before the World Cup. It didn’t look like he had anything close to it against Malta, but then that game also re-emphasised an impediment that he himself has highlighted. England still lack the type of passer or controller in the middle that helps unlock talent, that releases it.

Having the injured Adam Lallana’s little game-opening trickery back will help, but he still plays further forward. This, more than anything, is what Southgate himself has to work on before the World Cup.

One of the most interesting aspects of international football and management - especially at the very top of it - is that even the best squads are rarely blessed with complete balance. Even some of the greatest sides in history lacked something and had that missing link.

Where the managers truly earn their credit is in figuring out the system that covers up that and maximises everything else. To merely point out one of the most famous examples, Carlos Bilardo solved several problems for Argentina in 1986 by opting for wing-backs, at once filling so many holes in the first XI but more crucially finding the position to finally bring out the absolute best in Diego Maradona.

That kind of historic greatness is obviously not to be expected of Southgate or England, but the fundamental principle of it is. The manager has got a lot right around this England, but still needs to get the most important thing right on the pitch.

The manager will have a lot of thinking time before the World Cup.

He must think up some kind of system that gets around these flaws, that gets the best out of his talented team, and that really gets them on the front foot.