Gareth Southgate - New Under 21 Boss

[Harry]

To be brutally honest, in my opinion it makes no difference whatsoever who's in charge of the u-21's.

The opportunities for actively coaching a team of youngsters to play in a certain way and to successfully prepare them for the full squad are non-existent.

Basically - the players which he will have to select from will already have been trained to play a certain way with their own clubs. Half the time they won't be interested in representing England as it might tire them out for a competitive game for their club the following week. Most of those he chooses won't actually end up playing for the full squad anyway.

His job will pretty much be to pick the relatively few u-21 English players playing in the Premier League and attempt to cobble them together into some kind of formation and bluntly tell them to go out and play as good a game as they can.

It matters not whether they win, lose or draw. It's not like an u-21 team within a club, where you can embed a culture, identity and style of play. He'll have these kids for a couple of days, run a couple of training sessions, tell them where he wants them to be for set-pieces and that's about it.

There is no utopia here of employing a spectacularly successful coach to bring through the youngsters, because they're already getting coached day in and day out at their clubs.

For me, there aren't many success stories of players being picked for the u-21's, improving their game by this 'international' experience and proving this worth in the full squad. Usually, if they're a good enough player, they skip the u-21's and go straight to the full squad anyway.