It’s funny being an England fan: you’re always a mix of total cynicism and disbelief that we’ll ever win anything but there’s a little voice in the back of your head that still whispers, ‘It’s coming home’ – and after looking at some of the stats from our squad this season, that voice sounds a little louder.
On Wednesday night, Manchester City star Phil Foden went 21-up for goals this Premier League campaign, not to mention 10 assists to boot, and our brains have already started drifting to visions of him creating or scoring an all-important goal at the Euros this summer.
Undoubtedly one of the rising stars in world football, not just England, the Stopfordian midfielder is having his best statistical season ever there’s no doubt he already looks at home on the biggest stage following the treble last year, but it’s also the company he’s now joined that’s getting us really excited.
As it turns out, not only does Foden have the stats to back it up but he’s also just the fifth player to manage 20+ goals and 10+ (and without penalties) across all of Europe’s top five leagues this season. We were also delighted to find out that only one of those other players wasn’t English:
England players putting up these kinds of stats is making us believe we could actually win something.
When putting things into a wider European perspective (which we have to start doing now the tournament is just over two months away), you can’t help but start to feel more positive when you hear that key members of Gareth Southgate‘s squad are putting up the best numbers on the continent.
Although Harry Kane will obviously be starting presumably every game unless we romp through the group stage, having a second striker in Ollie Watkins, who is also having his best season in the top flight and looks to be leading a team outside of the ‘big six’ into the European spots, is not a bad place to be in.
Better still, with Ivan Toney having now returned from his lengthy league ban and already back to scoring, it seems the Three Lions boss has plenty of options up front when the Euros rolls around. Even Marcus Rashford is on 14 all-told in a fairly off-season for him.
In fact, it may have been a problem for England teams in recent years but this current squad seems to have attacking players galore, with the likes of Bukayo Saka, Jarrod Bowen and Cole Palmer all on 20 goal contributions each this season too.
Bowen himself said he wants to give Southgate as big a selection headache as possible, whereas Palmer turning one goal into a hattrick in stoppage time on Thursday to make it 21 goals and a dozen assists is the kind of match-winning mentality you want in your squad. These are good problems to have.
On paper, you can’t deny it’s a seriously impressive squad.
And then we come to that all-important midfield, which has also historically caused us a dilemma at major tournaments, either through not having enough creative players or the right balance between defence and attack. The classic Scholes-Gerrard-Lampard-Beckham problem.
We don’t want to get carried away but this year it looks like we might have one of the best lineups in the middle of the park you could hope for not only in quality and balance as mentioned before but in depth, physicality and overall engine too.
With Jude Bellingham being quite literally one of the best players on the planet right now and having quickly become a ‘galáctico’ star at Real Madrid in his first season and Declan Rice proving why everyone wanted to sign him as he’s been instrumental in Arsenal’s title race, it’s hard not to dream.
Oh, and we can’t forget about the latest inclusion to the squad in Man United‘s phenomenal young midfielder, Kobbie Mainoo, another Stockport-born starlet who hasn’t only just looked like the most mature player on the pitch at club level but earned player of the match on his very first England start.
Mainoo has been virtually undroppable since bursting onto the scene and after Ian Wright and countless other fans said he simply has to be in the squad, it already looks like he’s done one better and forced himself into most people’s starting 11.
We’re not ones to get overly obsessed with the most specific of stats but what we will say is that all three of these England players boast great numbers when it comes to passes played and accuracy, dribbles completed, tackles and low turnover rates when pressured – Mainoo, especially, at such a young age.
To cut a long story short, what we’re saying is that there is a supreme amount of talent in this squad and even aside from things like xG and all those more minute metrics, it’s a really energetic squad with some key experienced players all throughout the spine to help keep the younger players more grounded.
Whether or not Southgate is around after Euro 2024 remains to be seen and although there are lots of players to build around in the future, it looks like this is arguably his best chance to win something as England manager. It’s all there on the table, we’ve just got to believe. It’s coming home.
Featured Images — Man City (via IG)/Harry Kane (via IG)/England (via IG)
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Pep Guardiola hints at when Manchester City fans can expect to see their latest arrival
Danny Jones
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has given supporters a rough timeline as to when they can expect to see their new signing, or at least their latest arrival, make his first appearance.
The Blues wrapped up the January transfer window with four major signings: their new attacking number seven, Omar Marmoush (who has already bagged a hattrick on his home debut) promising defensive duo, Abdukodir Khusanov and Brazilian Vitor Reis, as well as their ‘mini-Rodri’, Nico Gonzalez.
However, the club has had another late arrival who was technically signed back at the start of last year but who has spent for the last 12 months or so loaned back to his previous parent club, River Plate in Argentina, waiting to make the move over to the Etihad Stadium – and now he’s here in Manchester.
Speaking on his touchdown in 0161, Pep said Claudio Echeverri won’t be thrown into first-team action straight away but did give a rough estimate as to when City fans could expect him to get involved. You can see him discussing the integration plan in his post-match press conference following the Spurs win.
The mention was only brief but there’s still plenty of reason for Man City fans to be excited by the late January signing.
“Yeah, he [Claudio Echeverri] is going to start to train and mainly will be for the end of the season, maybe the [Club] World Cup and as soon as possible [that] he arrives he can adapt quick for the future.”
As mentioned, the 19-year-old Argentinian attacking midfielder from Resistencia officially put pen to paper with CFG back in January 2024 and was quickly dubbed ‘the next Messi’.
Now, although the football world is often quick to jump the gun with these things and he isn’t the first and certainly won’t be last to be slapped with this premature title, he’s done more to back up these claims since then than he has rubbish them.
Starring at the 2025 Under-20 South American Championships, netting six goals in nine games to finish the tournament as the second highest scorer thanks to notable braces against Brazil and Uruguay as the young Argentine’s finished as runners up.
He also notched 48 senior appearances for River Plate thus far, netting four goals and grabbing eight assists in that time, not to mention having already captained his national team at the 2023 Under 17s World Cup, where he scored another five.
Safe to say there’s plenty of talent to be tapped in this lad.
Once again, Echeverri won’t go straight into the senior set-up for a little while yet, barring a major injury crisis, but he’ll be a more than exciting addition to the City Football Academy and for future first-team lineups for years to come.
Who knows, maybe he’ll be included in an FA Cup matchday squad? Nevertheless, you can expect him to not just come of the bench but hopefully show what he can do at the Club World Cup this summer.
City‘s first fixture as reigning champions of the competition will be against Moroccan side Wydad AC on 18 June 2025.
You can watch Echeverri’s first full interview as a Man City player down below:
The new Man City signing is excited to be finally be part of the club 13 months on from agreeing his contract.
‘Nothing is eternal’: Is Pep Guardiola hinting at the end of Manchester City’s supremacy?
Danny Jones
Pep Guardiola looks to have suggested that more than a decade of Manchester City’s supremacy and Premier League dominance at the very least might be coming to an end.
Speaking in his post-match press interviews after City were knocked out of the Champions League by serial European Cup winners Real Madrid, Guardiola cut a somewhat more deflated figure than usual following the 3-1 defeat.
A Kylian Mbappe hattrick which was closed out within an hour of play was enough to stretch the aggregate score to 6-3 over the two legs and Madrid doubling their lead across the tie proved yet again why, not unlike City domestically over the last decade, they’re the kings of the continental competition.
In contrast, however, Pep seemed to accept the loss much more easily than perhaps we’ve seen in the past and rather than appearing familiarly frustrated or defiant in the press conference; instead, he seemed rather reflective, responding to one reporter: “Nothing is eternal”.
🗣️ "Nothing is eternal" – Pep Guardiola.
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Insisting that they have to decide whether a significant rebuild is needed to keep competing at the very top level consistently as they have done since the 54-year-old arrived back in 2016, he argued that it is only with that they’ll be able to determine what comes next.
As for the result itself, he made no bones about Carlo Ancelotti’s side having “deserved it”, stating simply that “the best team won” and that fans and players alike have to “accept the reality: they were better.”
Having been a familiar foe for Pep long before he arrived in Manchester, both at Barcelona and Bayern Munich – not to mention City having faced Los Blancos a dozen times before Tuesday night since 2012 – there have been less surprising outcomes for supporters to come to terms with.
“With time, the club and everyone is going to accept what it is but for now we have 30/40 games for the Premier League next season to try and be here [in the Champions League] and to improve. Nothing is eternal”, said the Catalan coaching genius.
On the other hand, he also went on to add that it was merely a reflection on the night itself and not what his team have achieved in recent years.
He went on to remark that “when we were playing outstanding it hurt more” to be knocked out of the UCL when he felt they deserved to stay in it, but still insisted: “We have been unbelievable and we have to try step by step to get better from today.” Tonight just wasn’t the night.
Who knows? Perhaps it was just some more melodrama from a manager with an undeniable flare for pageantry and playing into/in the face of narratives when he doesn’t come out on top – which hasn’t happened all that often until their dip in form this season.
Plus, there’s certainly still plenty for him and the fans to be positive about; not only has the arrival of their ‘Egyptian Prince’ and the media’s Mo Salah successor, Omar Marmoush, got plenty of people excited – especially after that first-half hattrick against Newcastle – but so too have the other January signings.
In fact, for all of his downplaying in this particular presser (which you can hear in full HERE), it felt like there were only upsides after their victory over Newcastle, even going so far as to dub new signing Nico Gonzalez a ‘mini-Rodri‘.
You can watch the highlights from the game down below:
Pep is right, nothing is eternal – but sometimes you just come up against talents like Mbappe and there’s very little anyone can do about it.
Danny Jones -
5th April 2024 
