World Cup

INJURIES and bad luck are a part of elite sport.I heard on talkSPORT people were debating whether we should stop the last round of Premier League games to protect players going to the World Cup.
Chelsea left-back Ben Chilwell is the latest England player facing World Cup woe after injury, but the string of bad luck is nothing sinisterCredit: Alamy
Enngland skipper Harry Kane has promised to keep giving his all for Spurs despite the World Cup being just three weeks awayCredit: Getty
Come on, really?
There will be players who miss out on FA Cup or Champions League finals, NBA stars or those in the NFL who miss out, too.
It is about being fit at the right time and being in form, and it is untimely but England have had a spurt of injuries.
But if this was any normal season, players would be getting injured now anyway, with fixtures coming thick and fast and the previous campaign taking a toll.
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I remember Declan Rice saying he played 68 games last season and now he is playing week in, week out.
But the law of averages suggests that if you aren’t given a proper rest, you will probably get injured.
It is just the demand of being one of the biggest players in your position.
Ben Chilwell was injured last year, too, so it isn’t anything new for him to be sidelined — it is just unfortunate.
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Harry Kane said he will not take a backwards step in these last few games, and that’s how it should be. At that level, if you are off it by five per cent, it shows.
If you’re thinking a player can just potter about in a Prem game, not put too many tackles in and avoid any chance of getting injured, you’re wrong. It is impossible.
If Rice decides not go into a tackle properly, do you think West Ham fans will say, ‘Ah, it’s okay, he is saving himself for England’. Absolutely not.
You are either at it or not.
Harry Kane said he will not take a backwards step in these last few games, and that’s how it should be. At that level, if you are off it by five per cent, it shows.Troy Deeney
If David Moyes or any boss sees that, they will go, ‘Nah, that ain’t happening. You think you’re too good for us?’
There is also the other angle. If you pull out of tackles to avoid injury in the Prem,  then  get selected but don’t play a minute at the World Cup, the first thing your manager is going to say is, ‘Are you going to play properly this week?’
Let’s say a player goes further and tells his manager, ‘I’m not going to play in the last weekend of games’, he may still get injured in the week leading up to the World Cup. What do we blame then? The training?
Playing for the national team is the biggest honour you can have. But it only comes from the hard work you put in with your club, so I don’t think you can change who you are.
I’ve seen players go off to international duty and nothing changed in their personality the two or three weeks before it.
We also need to come away from this notion we’re the only nation losing players to injury — with Timo Werner being the most recent for Germany.
If Neymar or Lionel Messi miss out, will we be reacting in the same way? No, we will be thinking we have a chance here to win, so we have to take the rough with the smooth.
Gareth Southgate has a valid reason, if the current injury doubts miss out, to suggest this will not be his strongest England squad. But I don’t think we can have many excuses. Our depth is ridiculous. We have a wonderful squad regardless.
If Kane goes down, the people coming in are not world class yet — but only because they haven’t had their chance.
With Chilwell out, Brentford’s Rico Henry would do really well.
If Kyle Walker and Reece James don’t make it, you are “only” left with Kieran Trippier and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
If Kane goes down, the people coming in are not world class yet — but only because they haven’t had their chance.
We went to World Cups with Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe as back-ups, who weren’t considered world class, and I didn’t hear many complaints.
We are creating excuses and a narrative as to why we can’t win the World Cup — or go far in Qatar. For once, let’s not build that safety net.

CALL UP CALLUM AND SPOT-KICK KING IVAN
In-form Newcastle striker Callum Wilson deserves to go to QatarCredit: Getty
CALLUM WILSON has been injured in the past but now he has hit great form and is flying, and now you’re arguing he shouldn’t miss out on Qatar.
Right now, it seems it is either Wilson or Ivan Toney. In my opinion, I don’t think Ivan goes.
That isn’t my personal choice as I think he should, but I could see a scenario where Gareth Southgate picks just one out-and-out striker to be a replacement for Harry Kane, and then pick a wide player to cover that area like Marcus Rashford.
For me, Gareth should take both Wilson and Toney. They are two completely different sorts of players.
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If we get to a situation like we did in the Euros final, you need a proven penalty taker. That’s what history has shown us, in high pressure moments to win games, so why wouldn’t you take him?
Even if he doesn’t play but comes on purely to do the business from 12 yards, we need someone who regularly takes them, rather than a player who takes them well in training. More

ENGLAND stand at fourth, unsteadily I must add, among the favourites for the World Cup in Qatar.They have a chance of recording their second Hallelujah in 72 years but for all Gareth Southgate’s soft-spoken commitment, I won’t bet more than a few of the King’s newly-minted bob on it.
Cautious Gareth Southgate is unlikely to see his England side enjoy another long tournament runCredit: PA
It appears the team is on a gentle downward curve, perhaps because too many of the squad that did so well in the European Championship last year have slipped into exhausted form or spent too many hours in the treatment room.
Or maybe because there is so little break between the Prem ending mid-season and the tournament starting that players who are carrying injuries cannot travel.
Why, oh why did Fifa give Qatar the World Cup? Well… we know why, don’t we?
But despite all the issues, it seems the team doesn’t sing any more.
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Southgate is a cautious manager and he has more reasons to be so than at any time in his six-year tenure.
Things don’t knit so tidily these days. For one reason or another, Harry Maguire, Kalvin Phillips, Kyle Walker, Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford are below their best, not surprising in the case of Phillips because injury has limited him since he joined Manchester City.
His knotty aggression would be badly missed.
Some little miracle will have to work for England even to reach the semi-finals, which the bookies suggest they should. Football coming home? More like partying in Rio or Paris, I’d guess.
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So our fans will have to be satisfied with the Premier League, the lucky dogs. I say that because their likely disappointments of Doha will soon be no more than regrets at what (just) might have been, once the Prem returns.
Yes, it’s true that I love the competition. Not all of it, what with VAR, with players littering the pitch because something hurts a little and with handball rules no one can quite understand.
Even with those reasons — and fill in the space for half-dozen others — English football is unbeatable entertainment. It’s simply the best league in the world.
Rich men and Hollywood stars have discovered this, so have oil sheikhs and Americans.
Man City and the rest of the Prem’s Big Six will run away from the rest unless spending is curbedCredit: Reuters
Oil-financed football is not completely my favourite for the future of the top-level game because vast money is beginning to warp it.
Buy a club, grab the best manager going and suddenly your team — lucky old you — are among the leaders.
It happened to Manchester City, who appointed the best boss on earth, Pep Guardiola, and garlanded him with almost anything he wanted.
This is not jealousy in Claret and Blue writing, instead of grumbling, the tut-titters, I feel we ought to be cheering all of the Premier League teams along. The Government could learn from the way the Prem is conducted. It proves that a trickle-down policy can work.
Whether the EFL like it or not, a heap of money is already being passed through English football and, guess what, it works.
The Championship is a first-class competition with the seventh-highest attendance figure in the game.
Buy a club, grab the best manager going and suddenly your team — lucky old you — are among the leaders.Karren Brady
But while the EFL are fixated about the cliff edge from the 20th professional club in the country and the rest, there is already a bigger drop forming in the Prem, between sixth and the rest.
The Uefa Champions League money, which pays out an average of £60million, looks set to grow by 50 per cent.
This doesn’t even take into account the additional revenue these clubs earn from sponsorship, retail and so on. The sponsorship revenue of Liverpool is greater than the entire turnover of Aston Villa.
The result is that it’s getting harder and harder to compete with the spending power of the top six and the gap is growing.
It should come as no surprise that half of the top ten highest-paid players in the Premier League play for Man City.
And the best-paid player in the Prem – Cristiano Ronaldo (£27m a year) – earned £9m more than the ENTIRE TURNOVER of Nottingham Forest last year (£18m).
It’s bonkers when you look at it like that.
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Our game thrives on competition, so maybe there should be some calls for addressing this problem – improved control of the amount Premier clubs spend on transfers, either levelling up or down.
Otherwise the top six will never be challenged in the league, something I guess they wanted to achieve with their disastrous closed shop European Super League farce. More