England manager Gareth Southgate has talked about why he omitted Southampton's James Ward Prowse from his latest England squad.

Gareth Southgate is an honest man and in fairness to him he ties to explain the decisions he makes and why he has made them, but that doesn't mean he is not applying double standards.

Speaking about why he did not pick James Ward Prowse for the upcoming International games the England manager had this to say.

‘We love Prowsey — I’ve been accused of being father of Prowsey over the years!’ joked Southgate, who made the midfielder his captain when in charge of the Under-21s."

"‘This most recent spell is his best spell since we capped him before and he is, I would say, a world-class deliverer of set plays. But he’s only recently got back into the team at Southampton."

"It’s not a straight forward selection this one. We’re four months from our last game, and you could look at Fabian Delph and say he’s not been playing for Manchester City, but he was our best player against Croatia. ‘

So trying to balance all that has been difficult this time, there’s no question, but we have qualified for a semi-final in the summer. It would be strange to make huge changes to that squad. ‘

But we’ve added another young player in Declan [Rice] and we know that there are some players just on the fringes that we would never hesitate to call in, both in terms of their ability but also in the case of James Ward-Prowse, his character as well. He is absolutely the sort of character you want around the squad.’

But Southgate is applying double standards here and to say that JWP has only recently got back in the team is being a little conservative with the truth, JWP has started every game we have played in 2019, thats 2 1/2 months of football spanning 10 League games and 2 in the FA Cup plus he had been involved in all but two of the Premier League games played in December.

That is not exactly "Recently getting back into the team" and far better than the likes of Fabian Delph who has barely played in the Premier League for Manchester City.

I can understand why you would bring back key players such as Dele Alli after injury, but if someone isnt playing regularly then that is not good preparation for England duty nor can it do much for the player himself's confidence.

Gareth Southgate has the potential to become a decent England manager, but he has to get back to the days when it was form for your club that got you in the England team, not the fact that you were playing for a big club or because you have indicated that you are willing to change countries.

Make playing for England something to strive for and be proud of again and you will get better performances on the pitch and re ignite the passion that both players and fans had for the England team, these days there is little of that except when we do well at a tournament and the armchair fan suddenly appears fully laden with falgs of St gGeorge newly bought in Tesco's

Photo: Action Images

ElSanto added 16:10 - Mar 14 Yeah, I agree with what you're saying, Nick. The most important point you make is that it gives an incentive to young players to go and sit on big 6 benches.
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Jesus_02 added 17:05 - Mar 14 England managers have always courted the to six . Its a political ploy . If England didn't inflate the value of Loftus Cheak they may not be able to play all the English first team players like...erm… John Terry...Frank Lampard I have given up hope for England after they employed Greg Dyke and he decided that Players had to play in Champions League to be considered. As Saints supporters we should be grateful that he hasn't been selected. If he had it would have most likely meant that the FA had brokered a deal with one of the top six.

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1teeminants added 18:05 - Mar 14 Let’s be honest with ourselves here. JWP is playing very well at the moment but up until fairly recently before Ralph arrived he was largely anonymous in many games he played for saints and is only now starting to show his real talent. He needs to perform consistently over a greater length of time in my opinion . I completely understand where Southgate is coming from.

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IanRC added 21:12 - Mar 14 Southgate is no better than any of the corrupt England managers that failed to pick Le Tiss. As Pele said, if he were Brazilian we would build a team around him. Unfortunately we were saddled with the likes of Venebales and Hoddle and even then the 'big' teams players were always unduly favoured (remember Anderton ....). No wonder we failed to win anything after 66. Fast forward to today and nothing has changed. England still exit tournaments as soon as we come up against decent opposition. The manager continues to pick players based on who they play for rather than on merit. The whole process and the FA appears to be riddled with corruption, just like FIFA. I have no time for Southgate or his predecessors and no confidence that the FA will appoint anyone who will rock the big boys club.

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underweststand added 21:41 - Mar 14 There's a lot of footballing politics here , too. It's "good box office" to have a goodly selection of London-based players when there are games to play at Wembley as it increases the numder of "locals" passing the turnstiles. As IanRC noted above , team selection is begining to smell like the Venables / Hoddle days when England squads struggled for goals whilst MLT was scoring bucketloads, and yet was still denied the extra 20+ caps that he surely deserved. Perhaps Prowsie will have to score another half dozen goals before May to earn himself a place on the England bench, whilst Southgate continues to choose players who can't get off their own club's benches for more than 15 minutes a game. Shame on you Gareth.

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SaintBrock added 21:43 - Mar 14 Utter bullshi*e from Southgate as usual.
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redwight added 09:55 - Mar 15 Iteeminants has got it right here. It amazes me that posters on this site can go from dismissing JW-P as an unfulfilled lightweight who, if he were a horse, should be taken out and shot, to now regarding him as a shoe-in for the England squad. It is worth noting that James Maddison has also been left out. While this strengthens the argument that you need to be playing for the big 6 to be selected, at least it demonstrates that Southgate doesn't have an anti Saints bias.

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