Good evening and welcome to our coverage of England’s friendly match against Bosnia, which comes to us from St. James’ Park. It’s the penultimate match England have before the Euros (they face Iceland at Wembley on Friday) so limited opportunities for Gareth Southgate and his coaches to fine-tune what they plan to do against Serbia on Sunday 16th. It looks like being a good chance for some of the fringe players to force themselves into the forefront of the manager’s thinking: partly because some are resting/recovering but a reasonable policy in and of itself.
Five guys who have strong chances of starting against Serbia won’t feature tonight: Manchester United’s Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw have injuries, John Stones joined the squad late, Jude Bellingham is due to join up with the Three Lions squad on 8 June after the small matter of winning the European Cup, and Bukayo Saka is sensibly being rested. Local hero Anthony Gordon is probably the injured man who would have profited from the chance to strut his stuff but there it is.
Southgate, diplomatic and sensible as ever, says that the door is still open for lots of names.
Jack Grealish has not played as much as he would have liked this season he is still in the running to make the cut.
Marcus Rashford was left out of the provisional 33-man squad for Germany and there has been talk that Grealish could be the next big name axed with Southgate set to cut the squad to 26 players by June 7.
Grealish made just 20 Premier League appearances for Manchester City this season, scoring three goals, and was an unused substitute in their FA Cup final defeat by Manchester United last month.
Asked if Grealish was in danger of missing out, Southgate said: “I don’t think we’re defining that just yet. I think we know where we’re likely to be.
“I haven’t talked to him specifically about the Cup final. But he has been really bright and he loves being here.
“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.”
Southgate added there was time for people to impress in friendlies against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iceland.
The likes of James Maddison, Eberechi Eze, Cole Palmer and Jarrod Bowen are all pushing for berths in the squad and Southgate said he had not settled on how many attacking players he would need.
“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,” he added.