Why Southgate has picked some centre-backs instead of others

Alex Howell, BBC Sport

The inclusion of Harry Maguire has been one of the biggest talking points since Gareth Southgate made his England list of 28 players. Maguire has been dropped to the bench by Erik ten Hag at Manchester United, with the Dutchman favouring a partnership of Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane.

Against other English centre-backs in club football, Maguire has the worst minutes-to-goal-conceded ratio of one every 40.1 minutes when he has been on the pitch for United this season.

Conor Coady, on loan at Everton from Wolves, tops the list with Ben White second, but there is no place for the Arsenal defender in the squad. White also has a high duel success rate of 62.5%.

It looks as though the fact the 24-year-old is playing at right-back for his club since the return of William Saliba, and his lack of experience at international level, are the reasons why he is an outsider for the World Cup squad, which will be announced in October.

Although Maguire’s stats aren’t impressive when looking at his club form it is a different story for his country, which shows why Southgate calls him “one of our best centre-backs”.

He has 46 caps, experience in World Cup and European Championship campaigns, is behind only Kyle Walker of Manchester City in terms of the most minutes played for England and has kept the most clean sheets out of any centre-back under Southgate.

When the 29-year-old was booed in the home match against Ivory Coast in March, Southgate said: “We aren’t going to win a World Cup with a load of players with three or four caps. That’s never happened in the history of the game.”

It looks as though the manager is sticking to this philosophy.

Read the full piece on Southgate’s dilemmas here