During a look through the potential marginal gains, Southgate was asked whether United\u2019s lack of Champions League football next season might leave their\u00a0England\u00a0players a little bit fresher. \u201cWe\u2019ve only got one with us,\u201d Southgate shot back, with a nod towards Harry Maguire. \u201cThey\u2019ve got a lot to do to get back in the squad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Southgate was referring to Luke Shaw,\u00a0Marcus Rashford\u00a0and Jadon Sancho \u2013 the former out of the picture because of injury, the latter pair omitted because of poor form. Shaw, too, has had a disappointing season, although with Southgate without a recognised left-back \u2013 Chelsea\u2019s Ben Chilwell only returned on the final day of the season for his club after a six-month cruciate knee ligament injury \u2013 Shaw would appear to have a clearer route back.<\/p>\n Southgate was surprisingly unsympathetic towards Rashford when he dropped him for the March get-together, noting pointedly that the forward had withdrawn from six of the previous eight squads. He called the decision to exclude him and continue to overlook Sancho as \u201cfairly straightforward.\u201d<\/p>\n It is not a phrase that Southgate would use in relation to the\u00a0World Cup\u00a0countdown. After the Hungary game, his players will mostly have only three weeks off before reporting to their clubs for pre-season and the matches will come thick and fast once the new campaign starts. The Champions League group phase, for example, will be squeezed in from 6 September to 2 November.<\/p>\n Southgate said there would be \u201cmidweek fixtures every week, whether that\u2019s a couple of League Cup weeks, definitely six European weeks and midweeks with Premier League games.\u201d He added: \u201cIt\u2019s manageable but the demands on the players are huge and we are all conscious that we can\u2019t keep adding to the calendar.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are still paying the price of Covid, really \u2026 having three games in international windows, four games now [in the Nations League], partly due to the timing of the World Cup because we lose the October camp so everything\u2019s condensed. I am sure players are gaining more of a voice in this and understandably so.\u201d<\/p>\n England have only one more camp before they depart for Qatar on 15 November \u2013 they play Italy (away) and Germany (home) in the Nations League on 23 and 26 September. The Premier League will pause after the fixtures on the weekend of 12-13 November.<\/p>\n Southgate brought up a potential issue before the World Cup when he wondered what would happen if a club had an England player with an injury. Would they want to keep the information in-house, rather than tell the Football Association, for fear of it leaking to their upcoming opponents?<\/p>\n Southgate will submit a long list of players to Fifa on 21 October, although it does not need to be made public. He is expected to announce his final squad on 9 or 10 November. The Fifa deadline is Monday 14 November, when England are scheduled to meet up.<\/p>\n Southgate admitted he would have no control over the players in the weeks leading up to the Premier League pause. \u201cInformation sharing is pretty good medically and we get the performance data from the Premier League so you\u2019ve got some markers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut equally there\u2019s always an understanding that clubs that have big games might not want to share certain things too early if they\u2019ve got players that might miss games. In general we have decent relationships with the clubs on that stuff but there\u2019s always going to be a bit of an element of the unknown in that period.\u201d<\/p>\n The Premier League fixtures for next season are to be released on Thursday \u2013 the first game will be on Friday, 5 August \u2013 and Southgate hopes that there will be no massive games on the weekend of 12-13 November. Indeed, the FA have made that specific request.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have asked the Premier League to have a think about things but we also understand that the fixture programme is very complicated,\u201d Southgate said. \u201cWe\u2019d have a preference for none of those big games [on 12-13 November] but to be honest the difference it\u2019s going to make is fairly marginal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could help us, perhaps, with a medical report. If a team played Saturday, it would give us an extra day to assess. Because we\u2019re going to have to meet on the Monday and fly on the Tuesday. We\u2019re going to have to make really quick decisions on medical situations, in particular. So that\u2019s the only thing that we\u2019re looking at that might help us. We understand the landscape but we\u2019d be stupid not to ask the question if it could make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gareth Southgate has warned his missing\u00a0Manchester United\u00a0contingent that they face a battle to regain their places for the World Cup as he looked ahead to the challenges of an unprecedented mid-season tournament, which begins on 21 November. The England manager is preparing for the fourth and last game of the end-of-season\u00a0Nations League\u00a0programme against Hungary at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":23368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3295],"tags":[10387,1911,169,9331,5222,7396,9478,1258,9505,8057,5500,5247,7090,1261,66,69,491,5626,11294,10954,1392,1560,3874,11018,301,7436,5460,12791,11252,115,507,6831,12085,6973,11973,13256,10917,267,12103,8552,114,5965,11259,6348,12790,3954,11359,36,5248],"class_list":["post-23346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-sport","tag-campaign","tag-champions-league","tag-chelsea","tag-city","tag-covid","tag-data","tag-dropped","tag-england","tag-european","tag-fear","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-games","tag-gareth-southgate","tag-germany","tag-harry","tag-harry-maguire","tag-hungary","tag-injury","tag-international","tag-italy","tag-jadon-sancho","tag-lead","tag-leaking","tag-leicester","tag-luke-shaw","tag-maguire","tag-manager","tag-manchester","tag-manchester-united","tag-marcus-rashford","tag-missing","tag-nations","tag-nations-league","tag-one","tag-players","tag-poor","tag-premier-league","tag-price","tag-qatar","tag-rashford","tag-sancho","tag-shot","tag-us","tag-weekend","tag-will","tag-windows","tag-world","tag-world-cup"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Luke](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a472855a87b72942e6d963a8c3ec7ba304cc070b\/0_88_4989_2993\/master\/4989.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0d21823016c0ee4fa3f532ae41761d82\")
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