Weekend Preview: big tests for England & Southgate
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2022
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dan Bardell and George Elek are joined by the Athletic's Tim Spiers and Bet 365's Steve Freeth for a look ahead to a big weekend of international football which will feature significant tests for Gareth Southgate's England and Rob Page's Wales just two months out from the world cup.
Will Southgate put his faith in Bellingham? Will out of form Maguire and Shaw retain their starting spots? Who takes the no.1 shirt in Pickford's absence?
The international break also gives us the opportunity to reflect on the Premier League, so the panel cast their eye on how the title race and relegation battles are shaping up after seven games.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic |
| 0:02.7 | For Gareth Southgate's job, I would argue that the performance of the World Cup |
| 0:11.5 | will be massively swayed by what happens this week. |
| 0:15.1 | Hello and welcome to the Athletic Football Podcast. I'm Dan Bardell. This is the weekend preview. |
| 0:21.5 | I'm joined as ever by George Ellick and back with us after he ditched us last week for |
| 0:25.7 | the Spurs podcast is Tim Spears. Tim, you well? Yeah, I was just getting in some practice for the |
| 0:31.3 | main event then. Yeah, good times. You're back. Don't ditch us again though, Tim. Not very happy |
| 0:35.1 | with that at all. And it's also a warm welcome back to Bet365, Steve Freeth. Technology guru. How are you, Steve? Frustrated technology-wise, but a pleasure to be back with you guys. And Tim as well, of course, with the Wolves connection from last season. I'm delighted to be working with him. Good to have you all with us. So it is the international break and we're going to be looking ahead to some important games for England, Wales and other nations with just seven weeks |
| 0:58.6 | to go until the World Cup begins. Feels absolutely ludicrous to be saying that, but that is where |
| 1:03.5 | we are in the world. We'll also take this moment to have a look at where things stand in the |
| 1:07.9 | Premier League. We'll look at the Premier League picture. |
| 1:15.8 | So, England have two big games this weekend with the Nations League fixtures against Italy on Friday night and Germany on Monday. |
| 1:19.9 | George, let's talk about the Italy game first. |
| 1:22.4 | What sort of task does this pose for Southgate? |
| 1:24.9 | Is it a chance to experiment or does he need to put his full |
| 1:27.8 | strength team out? Yeah, I mean, I definitely don't think he can experiment for so many reasons. |
| 1:32.4 | I mean, England come into this. It's easy to forget just how bad England's form is coming |
| 1:36.6 | into this game. Four Nations League games so far. Two defeats against Hungary, the 1-0 |
| 1:42.3 | in Budapest and then the 4-0 defeat at Wembley, |
| 1:45.1 | and then two draws at a decent point in Germany, and then a 0-0 draw against an Italy side, |
| 1:50.0 | who are also in terrible form. |
| 1:51.6 | The two Euro's finalists since that game haven't been a very good nick. |
... |
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