Roy Hodgson’s biggest Euro 2016 headache will be the England players to leave out

Patrick Barclay24 March 2016

After decades of hand-wringing about the percentage of English players in the Premier League and Greg Dyke’s anguished inquiry, suddenly the main problem in picking an England squad for the European Championship is that some potentially useful talents have to be left out.

At least that was how it felt on Monday when, unaware of the shadow about to be cast over the tournament by events in Brussels, I joined Stan Collymore, Mark Saggers and Martin Lipton of The Sun on talkSPORT radio, pretending to be Roy Hodgson and thrashing out the 23.

Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain weren’t the only notables omitted; their Arsenal colleague Kieran Gibbs was missing, along with Tottenham’s Kyle Walker and Ryan Mason.

My greatest regret was that, like Hodgson in all probability, we couldn’t find a place for West Ham’s Mark Noble, who, in a less splendidly endowed season, would be on many a long-list for Footballer Of The Year.

But here’s our squad and I’d be interested to know your opinion, especially as I didn’t agree with all of the choices myself:

Goalkeepers: Joe Hart, Jack Butland, Fraser Forster.

Defenders: Nathaniel Clyne, Chris Smalling, John Stones, Ryan Bertrand, Danny Rose, Gary Cahill, Phil Jagielka.

Midfielders: Eric Dier, Jack Wilshere, James Milner, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling, Adam Lallana, Dele Alli, Ross Barkley.

Forwards: Harry Kane, Daniel Sturridge, Jamie Vardy, Danny Welbeck, Wayne Rooney.

It was resolved that Danny Drinkwater would take a midfield spot if Wilshere doesn’t make it and I parted from the majority on that. Assuming the Leicester man has a comfortable debut against either Germany or Holland, he’s in my 23 ahead of Henderson or Milner.

I’d rather have Flanagan than Clyne at right-back — again, democracy confounded me on this — and am not sure if Sterling deserves to be in at Walcott’s expense.

But it does seem all those fears of the English cupboard becoming bare were unfounded, especially with an attacker as exciting as Marcus Rashford coming through.

Although the nation still struggles to produce back-four class — Stones apart — so, as we’ll see in France, do other nations.

But first, with cautious optimism and crossed fingers, to Berlin.

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