Gareth Southgate decided not to start Aston Villa man and that caution underpinned England’s dour display against Scotland
With four minutes to play at Wembley, with a feeling of the air shooting up out of the stadium, possibilities folding in on themselves, with the kilted men in the stands already on their feet, arms spread in a swell of fond, goalless-draw triumphalism, Jack Grealish took a pass and was followed right the way back into his own half by Stephen O’Donnell. Grealish turned and twisted and feinted, like a seahorse twirling across the coral, and eventually drew a knee to the thigh from an exasperated O’Donnell, who was booked as he sprinted back.
It is always tempting to see signs and flags. It will be tempting for England fans, Jack fans, those who identify as pro-Grealo and anti-Gareth – because these are binary times and even here we find our oppositions – to imagine that same sequence taking place an hour and a half earlier, when the game was still fluid, and England’s attacking patterns not yet congealed into something damp and soggy and unhappy.
