Whoever Southgate brings to Russia next summer, will mostly have taken part in last WC. Luckily without Rooney, but still - those players have brought very little England success. No pride, no fight - just overrated, highly paid "professinals"....

RLC good player - gets experience now with England squad and will help CPFC this season.

Reason why Zaha not an England player is Henderson. He and Wilf had a bust up at U21 level under .... Southgate as manager. I rest my case!

I was thinking along the lines of "yes, there's definitely a big game bias" but then you go through the squads of the smaller PL clubs and you realise that often their best players are either foreign or they are doing ok because they work well as a team. There are some good defenders around (Mee at Burnley, Mawson at Swansea, etc) but you look at the midfield and forward positions and there is a paucity of talent. Gray at Leicester and Redmond at Southampton I would personally swap for Lingard, but they've hardly proven themselves. Up top there's even less choice with Vardy already picked; Would you have WWF Troy 'no goals' Deeney in the squad?

So although I think that players like Cahill, Henderson and Young are not international quality, I think it's more just a case of we don't have a great deal of high-quality English players around at the moment. Hopefully by the next World Cup (in 2022) some of those tournament-winning youngsters will have grown up and we might win a trophy.

On the Palace front I think England will definitely be regretting not having tried to get Zaha on board and as for the rest I think Townsend is unlucky not to be in the squad, but if we start getting results he may be able to fight his way back in. No one else has earned a call up this season

Defoe didn't even make it into the Euros squad, so I don't know how you can count him in that.

Vardy was incredibly impressive when he was chosen. How he'd not have been chose would've been criminal. Do you really have to be in that kind of form to be picked over someone like Sturridge?

Livermore was picked for a friendly and played against Lithuania - a game which is essentially treated as a friendly by England.

Maguire and Keane have been exceptions, but they're only in the squad due to the lack of English defenders in the top 6 teams. What English defenders, who were available, were missing due to Keane or Maguire's inclusion?

Okay fine, let's compare the two:
Townsend has started every game this season, worked his socks off and has probably been the only player who's played well every game he's played for us. Lingard has made 8 PL appearances this season, 7 of them sub appearances. His 'more goals in the past week' came against a crap Swansea team in the same game, whilst playing for one of the best teams in the country.

Okay, maybe I'm biased with Townsend, but does Lingard deserve a call-up over, say, Demarai Gray? If Lingard played the same for a club like Watford, he would not be in that squad.

Edited by Dan1994 (04 Nov 2017 12.25pm)

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I listed those players because you suggested you have to go back to the 70s to break the trend, which is not even remotely true, as I suspect you know. There are numerous examples moreorless every season.

I couldn't care less that Townsend works his socks offs - look at it objectively and tell me how an attacker who's played every game for a club who failed to score for 7 games in a row can possibly be considered for the England squad. Lingard outscored Townsend last season as well, with considerably less playing time.

You cite Lingard's lack of playing time at United, and then suggest Demari Gray, who until recently, couldn't get into the Leicester side over Mark Albrighton - is he international quality as well?

As Painter said below, there are 8 players in the current squad from outside the top 6 - proportionally, I think that sounds about right.

You've backed yourself into a corner and are now frantically trying to defend it - using random WhoScored statistics is just clutching at straws.

There's always going to be some justification you can come up with as to why certain players are selected, but the facts are that one third of the squad comes from outside the top six - this is more than a reasonable amount IMO.

Out of interest, who do you think should have been included in the squad who hasn't?