29: Anthony Gordon, England, Panini M&S Eat Well Play Well, Official England Sticker Collection 2026

With the World Cup behind us Rich Allinson is here to muse about the future of English football following the most recent failure of the men’s team to bring it home. This blog’s WhatsApp group over the last few weeks is evidence that the world needs more of our excellent punditry. Five minutes before today’s subject briefly inspired a nation I told the lads that “Gordon has been awful. Getting closed down very quickly but doesn’t have a Scooby when it happens.” If anything England needed more defenders on the pitch. Over to Rich with some more insightful analysis.


Now that the dust has started to settle on the rejected immigration visa applications, the hydration break drinks bottles and Donald Trump’s FIFA speed dial handset, my mind is already looking ahead to the next World Cup and whether England will, to use a modern phrase, finally get over the line. I caveat this with the hope that I am wrong, but it very much feels like 2026 could be the end of the road for England reaching the latter stages of tournaments for a while. In my head the two main reasons for this are our ageing talisman and the impact of the Premier League. 

Although we’re not a one-man side (we’re a two man side, thanks to Jude Bellingham) Harry Kane will be 36 at the next World Cup and our striking options beyond him currently look bleak. Ollie Watkins is 31 and although he is a decent player, age isn’t on his side and he simply doesn’t have the ability to become the focal point of an international side. Ivan Toney sits in the same bracket as Watkins but with the added distinction of playing in an utterly shit domestic league. That said, they are both solid back ups to a top tier centre forward. The real concern is when you look at the other options for four years time. 

A cursory scan of the current England under-21 squad makes for fairly bleak reading. Divin Mabuma has just completed a season in the Championship with Stoke City where he got five in 26. At least he is a striker though, something his contemporaries are not; they all fall into that hateful bracket of being a “forward”. Ethan Nwaneri is good but he isn’t a line-leading centre forward. Same goes for Tyrique George, but he’s less good. Sam Amo-Ameyaw is, apparently, equally adept in a wide role or as a number 10 (yuck) and the same goes for Tyler Dibbling. Roman Esse is another one in this mould i.e. a winger/forward i.e. neither this nor that. If we can’t look to our under-21s, then what are our other hopes?

Across the three seasons since Harry Kane left for Bayern Munich, the Premier League top scorers charts have featured a paltry total of nine English players. Of these, five aren’t strikers (Cole Palmer, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, Morgan Gibbs-White, Jarrod Bowen) and the other four are Dominic Solanke, Danny Welbeck, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Ollie Watkins. Oh dear. Someone that doesn’t feature on this list but could be an option is Liam Delap, who, off the back of being a one-season wonder, was touted as the next cab off the rank. Injuries and Chelsea’s desire to become Spurs have held him back. It is good news that he has been told he can find another club (transfer listed in old money) as he needs regular football to establish himself properly. I hope for his sake that they sell him on to Brentford, Bournemouth or Brighton where he can get a few seasons as first choice under his belt and develop as the focal point of an attack. All is not lost for Delap, but can I realistically see him as our starting number 9 at the next World Cup? In a word, no, but currently he is our only real hope.

In short, we have no top quality goal scoring centre forwards vying for a place in the England starting eleven, and we seemingly have none coming through the youth system. There is little surprise that Harry Kane looks completely done in and offers very little in the latter stages of tournaments. He is carrying a huge workload because all of his contemporaries are crap and we are unable to rest him.

I guess the question is why? The answer, in my head at least, is the Premier League’s ever-growing obsession with foreign players. If the Transfermarkt website is to be believed, last season there were 585 registered players in England’s top flight and an astonishing 400 of them are from overseas. That equates to 68.4%. It is alarming that our domestic game has been allowed to get to the state where the pool of players to select the international side from is so small. It is obvious to say, but between 1996-8 our options were Alan Shearer, Chris Sutton, Teddy Sheringham, Andy Cole, Dion Dublin, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Les Ferdinand, Ian Wright and Stan Collymore. Yes, a couple of those fit into the Watkins/Toney bracket, but it would be nice to have the choice. It is also worth noting that there wasn’t an English based player that scored for us in the proper World Cup matches (if you count Marcus Rashford and Anthony Gordon as Barcelona players).  Having said that, spare a thought for the Dutch whose World Cup squad had more players playing for Sunderland (three) in it than it did players playing in Holland (two).  

Some folk might have popped a vein by now as France, Spain and Argentina don’t have a striker either. That is correct. But they also have Kylian Mbappe, Lamine Yamal and Lionel Messi, so that sort of negates it. 

Anyway that’s it. Football isn’t coming home, all hope is lost, and Thomas Tuchel is a dickhead. The end. 

Nb. I wrote this before we put six past France with no Harry Kane. You can ignore all of the above, apologies for wasting your time.

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