Here’s 30 players who could make up the core group of the England Under 19’s this season.
England Under 19’s – 2017/18
GK – Ellery Balcombe, Ryan Schofield, Jake Turner
Def – Trevoh Chalobah, Dujon Sterling, Ed Francis, Josh Tymon, Morgan Feeney, Reece James, Japhet Tanganga, Tolaji Bola, Tom Edwards
Mid – Mason Mount, Sadou Diallo, Elliot Embleton, Dennis Adeniran, Marcus McGuane, Tariq Uwakwe, Luke Bolton, Dan Kemp, Callum Slattery, Joe Willock, Ryan Sessegnon(00), Phil Foden(00) Angel Gomes(00)
For – Ben Brereton, Jonathan Leko, Reiss Nelson, George Hirst, Edward Nketiah, Samuel Shashoua, Martell Taylor-Crossdale, Jadon Sancho(00), Callum Hudson-Odoi(00)
(Did have Andre Dozzell in this squad but he was removed due to injury)
It’s a big year for the England under 19’s as if they qualify for their Euros then they’ll get the chance to qualify for the Under 20 World Cup they so thrillingly won last summer. This group is mainly made up of 1999 born players but some of the most promising 2000 born have been progressed too. Six of these players played in the last Under 19 Euros so already have plenty of experience at this age group and will be itching to try & defend their title and go the Under 20 World Cup.
Here’s a sample team of how England Under 19’s could look this season.
- Ryan Schofield
- Dujon Sterling
- Josh Tymon
- Sadou Diallo
- Reece James
- Trevoh Chalobah
- Jadon Sancho
- Taruq Uwakwe
- Ben Brereton
- Mason Mount
- Reiss Nelson
This is a strong team and with plenty of depth in the 1999 & 2000 age groups to call upon it’s going to be very interesting to see how they can do this year and whether they can get back to the Under 20 World Cup or defend their Under 19 Euros.
With the end of the transfer window coming, below is a list of Premier League & Championship players who go out of contract next summer. This means the possibility of them being transferred before the end of August is fairly high. There’s a lot of footballers here, some high profile like Alexis Sanchez others less so. It’s going to be interesting to see how many of them move between now & the end of the transfer window.
Contract Expiry Summer 2018 – Premier League
AFC Bournemouth – Marc Wilson, Baily Cargill, Rhoys Wiggins, Marc Pugh
Arsenal – Matt Macey, Carl Jenkinson, Kieran Gibbs, Jack Wilshere, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Joel Campbell
Brighton – Niki Maenpaa, Uwe Hunemeier, Gaetan Bong, Liam Rosenior, Rohan Ince, Richie Towell, Henrik Bjordal, Tomer Hemed
Burnley – Tom Anderson, Frederik Ulvestad, Scott Arfield
Chelsea – Willy Caballero, Eduardo, Matej Delac, Cristian Cuevas, Loic Remy
Crystal Palace – Wayne Hennessy, Joel Ward, Martin Kelly, Hiram Boateng, Yohan Cabaye, James McArthur, Bakary Sako, Chung-Yong Lee, Freddie Ladapo
Everton – Joel Robles, Gareth Barry, Ross Barkley, Aaron Lennon
Huddersfield – Luke Coddington, Jason Davidson, Dean Whitehead, Nahki Wells
Leicester – Ben Hamer, Robert Huth, Matty James, Leonardo Ulloa
Liverpool – Emre Can
Man City – Fernandinho, Yaya Toure
Man Utd – Marouane Fellaini, Daley Blind, Luke Shaw, Ander Herrera, Ashley Young, Juan Mata, Andreas Pereira
Newcastle – Tim Krul, Curtis Good, Paul Dummett, Massadio Haidara, Jesus Gamez, Emmanuel Riviere
Southampton – Maya Yoshida, Florin Gardos, Jeremy Pied
Stoke – Jakob Haugaard, Ryan Shawcross, Philipp Wollschied, Mame Diouf
Swansea – Mark Birghitti, Sung-Yong Ki, Kenji Gorre, Fernando Llorente
Tottenham – Michel Vorm
Watford – Miguel Britos, Jose Holebas, Valon Behrami, Ben Watson
West Brom – Craig Dawson, Claudio Yacob, James Morrison, Chris Brunt, Callum McManaman
West Ham – James Collins
Championship
Aston Villa – Alan Hutton, Gabby Agbonlahor, Mark Bunn
Barnsley – Adam Hammill, Andy Yiadom, Stefan Payne
Birmingham – David Davis, David Cotterill, Maikel Kieftenbeld
Bolton – Mark Beevers, Gary Madine, Ben Alnwick
Brentford – Jota, Harlee Dean, Lasse Vibe
Bristol City – Diego De Girolama, Ivan Lucic, Josh Brownhill
Cardiff City – Craig Noone, Junior Hoilett, Kadeem Harris
Derby – Jamie Hanson, Mason Bennett, Kelle Roos
Fulham – Michael Madl, Sone Aluko, Ryan Fredericks
Hull – Abel Hernandez, Moses Odubajo, Max Clark
Ipswich – Teddy Bishop, Luke Hyam, Kevin Bru
Leeds – Rob Green, Toumani Diagouraga, Souleymane Doukara
Middlesbrough – Grant Leadbitter, Fabio, Tomas Meijas
Millwall – Lee Gregory, Shaun Hutchison, Sid Nelson
Norwich – Harry Toffolo, Alex Tettey, Remi Matthews
Nottingham Forest – Lica, Vladimir Stojkovic, Eric Lichaj
Preston North End – Jordan Hugill, Liam Grimshaw, Paul Huntingdon
QPR – Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Steven Caulker, Jack Robinson
Reading – Jordan Obita, Tennai Watson, Stephen Quinn
Sheffield Utd – Kieran Wallace, John Brayford, Jake Eastwood
Sheffield Wed – Lewis McGugan, Adthe Nuhiu, Daniel Pudil
Sunderland – Billy Jones, Mika, Darron Gibson
Wolves – Andy Lonergan, Conor Coady, Jack Price
The new Premier League season is almost upon us. 2015/16 was the year of the surprise with Leicester becoming Champions. Last season saw Antonio Conte’s Chelsea win the Premier League at a canter. What will we find in 2017/18? It’s sure to be interesting finding out but its Antonio Conte and his Chelsea team which has been so fascinating. Their achievement represents the third wave of the Premier League as he succeeded in a way no one else had done until last season’s title winning campaign.
To understand the third wave we need to look at the past to the first and second ones. The first wave of change to perforate through the Premier League came when Arsene Wenger took over Arsenal in the Nineties. At that time footballers in England didn’t live well and the Premier League was generally an English League. Wenger changed all that. He recruited amazing foreign players that shifted the game forward. They were athletes as well as being footballers.
The way he changed Arsenal forced the rest of the Premier League to follow in his footsteps. Players became more professional; diets changed and generally everyone became more athletic. It was an amazing time and it really pushed English football on a more professional path both on and off the pitch. It’s strange looking back at that first wave now with Wenger still here. Now he seems almost old fashioned and the thought of him winning a Premier League seems a long way off. Yet when he came here he won the Premier League and he set English football on a revolutionary path from where it was at that time. It’s amazing that he’s still going but it’s also testament to how much he loves English football even if he’s nowhere near the manager he was all those years ago.
Fast forward on to 2004 when the second wave of change arrived in the Premier League. We’d just had the invincible Arsenal season when Jose Mourinho took over Chelsea and boy did he knock Wenger off his perch. Mourinho killed Wenger’s invincibles system with Claude Makele playing as a defensive midfielder but he did far more than that. He and his young vibrant Chelsea team pushed the Premier League onto new places. At this time in 2004, Mourinho was probably the best manager in the world. He came to a Premier League that was now much more athletically professional after the First Wave Wenger introduced. Jose introduced the tactical revolution which built on what was in the Premier League.
The Mourinho Chelsea team then was dominant and he injected another level of tactical sophistication which pushed them on in both the Premier League and the Champions League. His teams never felt beaten and it wasn’t unusual for them to play two or three systems in a game. They seemed to be so adept at slightly altering their tactics to get the wins they needed and at the time it felt light years ahead of anything else we’d seen in the league. Mourinho injected a new kind of dynamism to the tactics that were being played at that time and with that strong young team it was revolutionary.
He was aided by the fact that this was the era of great English defenders. Every top club had a marquee English centre back that would walk into the England Senior team of 2017. Chelsea under Mourinho drove forward and had Abramovich not interfered with things they probably would’ve won more. The Premier League thus became a much more tactical league than it had been in the Nineties when everyone tended to play 4-4-2 (bar a brief spell where a lot of team played 3-5-2 around 1995-97). Premier League players became more tactically sophisticated on top of the increased professionalism Wenger brought in although the league still retained its rather unpredictable identity it still has today.
The next radical time post Mourinho joining Chelsea had to be Leicester winning the league so unpredictably in 2015/16 but this wasn’t a big shift. A season on from that amazing triumph, it feels more like an amazing one off than a great trend setter but the next great shift or the third wave of change came with Conte joining Chelsea and winning the Premier League with a back three.
Conte became the first manager since the fifties to win the English League with a three man defence. What was so surprising was how dominant Chelsea were after they started playing the 3-4-3. Few teams seemed to do anything much against them and they won the Premier League at a canter. Of course Chelsea were a good team anyway having won the league in 2014/15 but the reason this Conte team was so good were because of the step forward in tactics.
As soon as Chelsea started playing a back three the critics were out saying it wouldn’t work but it worked all too well. It’s shifted the Premier League to another level tactically and it’s going to be generally interesting to see how teams approach 2017/18. It’s really opened up the back three as a positive defensive concept that now can win the title and we’ll see more teams playing this way or reverting between a back 3/back 4. It really did blow the league open tactically quite radically but it’s going to take some time before we know if it’s just a flash in the pan or something deeper.
The new Premier League season is about to begin. At this stage no one knows what it will bring but the third wave of radical change that saw Antonio Conte’s back three win the title will be influencing teams as this season starts. Will a team playing a back three win the title this season? You never do know but at least now, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they did.
Here’s an England squad of 35 players all of whom are eligible for the Under 17 World Cup this October.
England Under 17 Possibles for the Under 17 World Cup
Gk – Joe Bursik, Curtis Anderson, Thomas McGill, Alex Cull
Def – Timothy Eyoma, Lewis Gibson, Jonathan Panzo, Marc Guehi, Joel Latibeaudiere, Jake Vokins, Kane Wilson, Zach Medley, Steven Sessegnon, Brooklyn Lyons-Foster, Marcel Lavinier
Mid – Aidan Barlow, Alex Denny, George McEachran, Tashan Oakley-Boothe, Reo Griffiths, Nya Kirby, Angel Gomes, Morgan Gibbs-White, Rekeem Harper, Ian Carlo Poveda, Oliver Skipp, Stephen Walker
For – Rhian Brewster, Jadon Sancho, Daniel Loader, Phil Foden, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Emile Smith-Rowe, Austin Samuels, Jamie Soule
For the Under 17 World Cup, a squad of 21 including three goalkeepers must be named so this group of players will reduce down. What will be very interesting is which players are released by the clubs. You’d hope that the Premier League teams who own the majority of these players will let them go to the competition so England can give it a really good go. At the same time though, if a player like Phil Foden is getting game time at Man City then in the long term maybe that’s more important. We’ll just have to wait and see how things develop as the season progresses.
Here’s a sample team from this squad of 35.
- Curtis Anderson
- Timothy Eyoma
- Lewis Gibson
- George McEachran
- Jonathan Panzo
- Marc Guehi
- Phil Foden
- Angel Gomes
- Rhian Brewster
- Callum Hudson-Odoi
- Jadon Sancho
This is a very strong looking team already. Of course the one big player missing from this age group is Ryan Sessegnon. With him having already been moved up to the Under 19’s and playing for Fulham I’ve left him out of this discussion but it just goes to show that even without one of their best players, this England group can send a very strong squad to the 2017 Under World Cup. If they take it seriously and get enough of their best players, could they even win it? After this summer, quite possibly…
Last Update – 14th August 2017
Here’s West Ham’s current 25 man Squad. I’ll keep updating this until the full squad is announced at the beginning of September. The 25 man Squads can have a maximum of 17 players who aren’t Home grown. Clubs can have as many Home grown players as they want. Players who are born in 1996 or younger are classified as Under 21’s and don’t qualify for the 25 man Squads in 2017/18.
West Ham
- Mark Noble(HG)
- James Collins(HG)
- Andy Carroll(HG)
- Aaron Cresswell(HG)
- Michail Antonio(HG)
- Sam Byram(HG)
- Winston Reid
- Adrian
- Cheikhou Kouyate
- Diafra Sakho
- Pedro Obiang
- Angelo Ogbonna
- Manuel Lanzini
- Arthur Masuaka
- Andre Ayew
- Jose Fonte
- Robert Snodgrass
- Doneil Henry
- Moses Makasi(HG)
- Jaanai Gordon(HG)
- Pablo Zabaleta
- Joe Hart(HG)(On Loan)
- Marko Arnautovic
- Javier Hernandez
Last Update – 15th August 2017
Here’s West Brom’s current 25 man Squad. I’ll keep updating this until the full squad is announced at the beginning of September. The 25 man Squads can have a maximum of 17 players who aren’t Home grown. Clubs can have as many Home grown players as they want. Players who are born in 1996 or younger are classified as Under 21’s and don’t qualify for the 25 man Squads in 2017/18.
West Brom
- James Morrison(HG)
- Chris Brunt(HG)
- Boaz Myhill(HG)
- Ben Foster(HG)
- Craig Dawson(HG)
- Jonny Evans(HG)
- Matt Phillips(HG)
- Hal Robson-Kanu(HG)
- Jake Livermore(HG)
- Claudio Yacob
- Gareth McAuley
- James McClean
- Salomon Rondon
- Nacer Chadli
- Allan Nyom
- Callum McManaman(HG)
- Jay Rodriguez(HG)
- Ahmed Hegazy(On Loan)
- Gareth Barry(HG)
Last Update – 16th August 2017
Here’s Watford’s current 25 man Squad. I’ll keep updating this until the full squad is announced at the beginning of September. The 25 man Squads can have a maximum of 17 players who aren’t Home grown. Clubs can have as many Home grown players as they want. Players who are born in 1996 or younger are classified as Under 21’s and don’t qualify for the 25 man Squads in 2017/18.
Watford
- Troy Deeney(HG)
- Craig Cathcart(HG)
- Ben Watson(HG)
- Adrian Mariappa(HG)
- Tom Cleverley(HG)
- Heurelho Gomes
- Sebastian Prodl
- Jose Holebas
- Etienne Capoue
- Miguel Britos
- Nordin Amrabat
- Costel Pantilimon
- Abdoulaye Doucoure
- Christian Kabasele
- Younes Kaboul
- Daryl Janmaat
- Stefano Okaka
- Mauro Zarate
- Brice Dja Djede
- Roberto Pereyra
- Tommie Hoban(HG)
- Uche Agbo
- Will Hughes(HG)
- Daniel Bachmann(HG)
- Kiko Femenia
- Nathaniel Chalobah(HG)
- Andre Gray(HG)
