Match of the Day host Gary Lineker has disagreed with Gareth Southgate’s decision to replace Liverpool star Trent Alexander-Arnold with Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher in the victory over Serbia.
All the talk before kick-off revolved around the impending decision to play Alexander-Arnold in midfield rather than right-back. Despite criticism from the likes of Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Wayne Rooney, Southgate stuck to his guns, and the Liverpool man passed the test with no major errors.
Discussing how the 25-year-old performed in Gelsenkirchen, Southgate said: “Well, [he played] good. I have to say that he’s been really diligent in getting his positioning right, balancing off, obviously, Jude goes forward a lot, so I thought Trent adapted and adjusted to his positioning really well.
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“He used the ball well, obviously had a good effort on goal. In the end we wanted some fresh legs in there and Conor can obviously get to the ball quickly and we’ve got a squad and we need to use it.”
However, reviewing the England game on The Rest is Football podcast, Lineker took a different view on Alexander-Arnold being replaced by Gallagher. He said: “The one thing they weren’t doing was keeping the ball and suddenly you brought on a player who is less likely to keep the ball [Gallagher] which is odd.
“But he [Gareth] said in his interview after that game: ‘I needed protection, I needed the legs,’ but I disagree with him. I think we needed someone to actually calm [things] down.”
Alexander-Arnold and the England team will be back in action on Thursday evening when they face Denmark in Frankfurt.