I am sure there are people who are trying to justify what they watched last night as reason for England being in the last four of the Euros, but I haven’t heard from them.

On a night when England’s Captain and Manager collided – literally – the overriding impression is that this is an England team winning despite the plan and because of the youthful exuberance of Bellingham and Saka. The seniority of the long-serving players, Kane, Trippier, Pickford and Stones seems at best ballast and at worst a dead-weight.

England are the first team I have seen take a corner and pass it back to their goal-keeper without an opposition player so much as committing a tackle. For a team with such talent to rely on Jordan Pickford as its primary means of distribution shows how limited the ambition of its defence and midfield.

Contrast this with the Turkish/Netherlands clash that followed to see how little attacking intent was generated from our back five (including Declan Rice).

It is extraordinary that England will meet in the semi-finals, a team that finished third in their group and could reach the final winning knock out games with goals in the 95th and 80th minutes, both of which were their first shot on target.

Here are my five management tips for Gareth Southgate as he prepares for Dortmund on Wednesday.

Cheer up Phil!

Phil Foden does not look like a Tournament Player to me. He has the look of someone weighed down by the reputation that he has created as our top footballer in the Premier League. While Jude Bellingham hasn’t overwhelmed, Phil is just looking jaded, which for one in the first flush of youth and his first full-time tournament, is hard to understand. He looks miserable and is playing without any of the flair we know he can produce.

Hurry up Harry!

Harry Kane is going through one of those phases when he struggles to influence anything, We know he is trying, but he looks out of sorts with himself and his captaincy is non-existent. Hand the armband to Jude Bellingham and give Olly Watkins a run out. Kane has 45 minutes left to lumber along, I expect to see him substituted earlier against Netherlands unless he gets a move on. Ivan Toney is better at lumbering.

Bring back Trent

Britain has a world class distributor of the ball and it isn’t Jordan Pickford. Can we please have Trent Alexander-Arnold in charge of setting up attacks. We need his wit and guile and his technical expertise executing passes. He is the man to play us out from the back and our most accomplished set piece player. We should not take any short corners and Kyle Walker should be taking long throws into the box for our big men to flick on and our nimble youngsters to poke in.

Bench Trippier

From the moment he came on, Luke Shaw showed an assuredness we haven’t seen from Kieran Trippier. Trippier’s only cross last night was a headed one, he seems to have lost confidence to hit the ball with his left foot and memory of hitting it with his right. He isn’t a bad player but he is a senior one and players around him seem to react to his negative style by emulating it.

We really need an attacking threat down the left and Palmer and Shaw look to be able to provide it. Kyle Walker is one heck of a player who is under-used at present.

Attack-Attack-Attack!

We have got this far without the intent to score goals that pleases either our wonderful supporters in Germany or us armchair managers back home.

We have a speedy young team who are capable of terrorising opposition defences.

We seem to have forgotten that the best means of defence is attack and spend far too much of the game playing chess rather than football. More runs out of defence, more probing passes from the back to our wonderkids getting behind defences, more marginal offsides, more goals!

We have two matches to win our first men’s trophy in most of our living memory. We have two games to make this team loveable. Right now no-one has the slightest clue why we are in the semi-finals of this tournament and if anyone says to me that getting there justifies the way we are playing I will (metaphorically) spit in their eye.

There’s always a political angle

The Rt Hon Bukayo Saka (@BukayoSaka87) appointed Minister for Levelling Up. #ENGSWI 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/2wuY0zINPg

— ElyzabethSB (@ElyzabethSB) July 6, 2024