Southgate message wrong, Slot transfer reality & more

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why PSR must change, why Southgate should have led with a radically different message pre-Euros, why Liverpool won’t make a statement Euros signing and much more.

The players are mentally and physically knackered… Gareth should have led with that

The reality is that where you play in, for instance, the Premier League and La Liga, and you have 10 years of a cycle where it’s Premier League, Euros, Premier League, year off so we’ll go on an end-of-season tour, Premier League, World Cup, it’s going to tell. For Jude Bellingham, he hasn’t had that, so he doesn’t get the Harry Kane (who’s played a lot of football over a number of years) excuse. He’s 20 years of age. Phil Foden has played a lot of football. But, you can acknowledge that the players are mentally and physically fatigued and then acknowledge with equal legitimacy that it’s down to the manager to bring in fresh players that maybe haven’t played as many minutes, that are younger and haven’t been around the block like Harry Kane over a number of years… Cole Palmer, for example, looks fresh despite playing a lot of minutes last term. Anthony Gordon had injuries, played a lot of minutes but he should be fresh. It may well be that England moving forward, even if we bring in a Pep Guardiola or a Jose Mourinho to manage the side (and I’m sure they’ll be touted as names down the line), there’ll still be the challenge of mentally and physically fatigued players to handle.

I look at my own club, Aston Villa, and Unai Emery is one of the ones who comes out and says it as it is. Fullbacks, likely to bomb on, ‘Give me 60 minutes’. Then almost on 60 minutes, he will change one or both fullbacks. That means you’re playing two-thirds of the season effectively and should mean that as you get to the end of the season you remain fresher. It may be the case of saying, “Jude, Harry, Phil, Bukayo Saka – you’re our star men. Give me 60 minutes.” What does that say to the players? They’re not playing 90 and then after the hour mark, the cavalry will come. If Gareth had offered that message to the press before the tournament and acknowledged the fatigue hurdle, we might be sitting here viewing the situation very differently. We play at an intensity that other countries don’t. You see that Georgia performance? Wonderful! But they don’t play in the same arena that we do week in, week out with the same pressures and mental and physical load. It should have been about telling these key players to give it high intensity, give everything, for 60 minutes and if they’re dying at 60 minutes – the cavalry, in the form of Anthony Gordon, Cole Palmer, Kobbie Mainoo, whoever, comes on.

Gareth could have sold that as a reason. I think fans would have then bought that and thought, “Okay, it’s 0-0 against Slovenia, but the cavalry’s coming on at 60 minutes to change things.” At the minute, we don’t know who’s coming on or when, or the thought process behind it. Southgate’s already abandoned his great midfield experiment in Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Gallagher came in and Gareth took him off… all of a sudden Gareth has gone from a position where he could have said, “60 minutes, the top stars are out to keep them fresh”, to now looking like a reactive manager. That’s a problem. The narrative is a problem. We could have England move forward in the the tournament with a 1-0 here and a 0-0 there in our fourth tournament with Gareth where we’ve had the good side of the draw, all four tournaments, and not won something. Southgate is usually very good at messaging but he could have said, “Our stars have played more minutes, they’re definitely more fatigued, I’ve listened to what they’ve said and I’m gonna give them 60 minutes in the group games and we’ve got more than enough ability to come on.” If he’d done that, I think we may have got better results, scored more goals, given our big players a rest and reduced the hassle on his back.

The domestic leagues must help out the international sides

In the big leagues, take five or six leagues going down to the Portuguese and Dutch leagues, you should have one domestic league, one cup (so that would be the FA Cup or League Cup gone), no replays, you would ban post-season tournaments, you would have a FIFA or UEFA statute that limits European clubs to conducting their pre-season preparation in Europe. We have to get away from this nonsense that tours outside of Europe are good for branding; fans in America, Latin America, Africa and Asia have supported Premier League clubs way before they went visiting every other year. Those fans will come regardless from different parts of the world to watch their teams play.

I would scrap international friendlies completely and just have qualifying games for the Euros and World Cup. Players want more rest but they’re unfortunately woefully underrepresented by the PFA and their clubs who’ll happily keep their mouths shut and keep flogging a dead horse. Until we take the mental and physical load seriously, nothing will change. As a former player for big clubs, I’m fully aware of how you never get a chance to switch off. Ideally, there should be a rule in place that helps with this – perhaps something stipulating that an international footballer, like Harry Kane, can play a maximum of 50x 90 minutes a season. Done. It doesn’t matter how that’s spread over by Bayern Munich during the league season and German cup, for England, etc. It then gives players like Ollie Watkins a chance in the early qualifying rounds. It means more players getting more minutes and experience, enabling international managers to use them on a more regular basis and fully utilise the squad. It’s just fairness and common sense.

Included in that is friendlies. So if Liverpool or Aston Villa want to go to Thailand for a month. Darwin Nunez, for instance, on 50 games can’t go. They then have to play some young up-and-comers. The only solution to get teams playing like Georgia at European Championships and World Cups is by pursuing the mental and physical freshness that Georgian players have.

How do we help clubs outside of the Big Six be competitive?

I don’t like it. I don’t like what I’ve seen with clubs moving around the likes of Omari Kellyman, Lewis Dobbin, and Ian Maatsen to sidestep PSR regulations. I don’t like the fact clubs have to sit around a table and go, “Ah! This might work!”. I support one of the oldest clubs in world football. Aston Villa started the football league, so there’s a historical element of wanting the club to act in an appropriate manner and set the standard. Without PSR in the picture, Aston Villa could spend serious money on players. They wouldn’t be able to blow £1bn on a footballer, but you’d certainly see something in the range of £20-150m, if they so choose. However, the notion that we now breed players that have an affinity with the club, and might have been there for a long time, to give them to another club and we receive that club’s youngsters in return – it goes to show how broken the system is.

I get why clubs like Everton, Chelsea and Villa do it. I don’t like it. In Villa’s case, they can’t spend what Manchester City spent for years. So how can they compete? They had to sell Douglas Luiz to become PSR compliant. Now we’re looking at a situation where their top signing, as they go into the Champions League, could be Ross Barkley. That’s never happened with Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea or anyone else. But the reality is that all these other clubs have had the benefit of historic size and also being in the Champions League and Premier League long enough to get around any spending restrictions, until Manchester City and Chelsea came along and then the Premier League and UEFA went, “We need to stop this – it’s going mad!” So Villa have fallen foul of rule changes that were not of their making. I understand it, but I don’t like it.

What needs to happen is clubs need to get around a table and say, “How do we enable any club to be proactive enough in terms of their spending so they can get into the Champions League and win the league but not bankrupt themselves?” Whilst simultaneously trying to find a way for clubs already in the arbitrary 1992 club of the Champions League lock-in – where if you were there at the point, you’ve pretty much stayed there since – to not overspend. I think it’s going to take some sitting down and proper brainstorming because closing loopholes isn’t fair as it keeps those top four or five clubs in those top four or five positions as they’ve already got Erling Haaland or Kevin De Bruyne. Villa, I repeat, are in the Champions League on merit with a very good manager and their biggest signing may have to be Ross Barkley. That doesn’t seem fair. Let’s get around a table and push for a competitive Premier League again where all 20 clubs’ supporters at the start of the season at least have the belief that they could do something special. Closing every loophole as they come isn’t the way forward. If you’re swapping academy kids to get around Financial Fair Play – that’s ludicrous. It’s a bad system. It’s not working.

Accounting-driven transfers pose a serious threat to Premier League academies

If I’d been a youngster at Aston Villa from eight onwards, as a Villa fan, and I got into the first team and was doing well, but my manager and chairman came to me and said, “Effectively, we’ve got to sell you to Chelsea, Juventus or Bayern Munich” – that’s ridiculous! I should be able to have a say in the matter. The problem is, no one has looked at players like Omari Kellyman and gone, “But they could have stayed where they were.” Clubs would have made it fairly clear to them that the players would be doing them a massive favour by being sold. So it’s very unfair on young players to have someone turn round to them and go, “We wanted you here, we’ve had you here for however many years, but you know what? If you’d stuck around, you might have got in the first team. But as it turns out, the accountants need you to go.” There could be problems for academy recruitment in future if this is allowed to go on, as kids might go play lower down or, in some cases, may not play at all. They may not want to just be pushed around from club to club, five or six times, to adhere to an accountant’s set of rules and regulations. As a player, you don’t mind someone telling you you’re not good enough, but you do bloody mind if you’re 20 and good enough and someone tells you it’s down to a necessary financial transaction. Awful!

Could Liverpool make a statement Euros signing?

I don’t think there are any Euros players at the moment, at the price points Liverpool are working with, that they’d sign as statement transfers. Clubs are, of course, waiting until July 1 because of the new football selling year regulations. With Arne Slot coming in as the head coach, they’re not going to give him anything Jurgen Klopp didn’t have – so there’s not going to be a £100m signing coming in. As long as he gets numbers in areas where Liverpool are short, I think supporters of the club will be happy. For me, they’ve got enough up top, they’ve got enough midfielders, right-back is well covered in Trent Alexander-Arnold and Conor Bradley. Maybe some left-back cover?

I don’t know if there are any names in the Euros that have popped up where you think, “Oh, bloody hell! He’s been absolutely outstanding – he’s gonna cost £80m and Liverpool are definitely going to put in a bid for him!” I think it could be a very understated first window with Arne Slot saying, “We’ve got a great dressing room, it’s an evolution rather than a revolution.” Some Liverpool fans may be expecting five or six signings as is happening at Chelsea and Manchester United. But Liverpool are probably better served looking at City’s model and just bringing in one or two little tweaks in little areas that may need improvement. That’s also a massive thumbs-up to what Jurgen Klopp left Liverpool Football Club with – which is still a very capable squad. There’ll be a lot of chat with Liverpool being a big club. But there’s no one at the Euros where I think clubs will be thinking, “He’s been the top man at the tournament, let’s bring him in.”

I just don’t see some of the names that have been touted at Liverpool, unless one’s a left-back or burgeoning central defender. I don’t think that Liverpool need very much at all.