When Gareth Southgate omitted Trent Alexander-Arnold from his latest England squad, he probably didn’t expect to have kickstarted a chain of events that would lead to Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher calling each other “gobshite” in a car park on Instagram Live.
On Monday Night Football, English football’s two most high-profile pundits injected some helium to the hysteria currently surrounding Alexander-Arnold, screeching their way through a highly charged debate. With a tenacity more suited to PMQs than MNF, Carragher told Neville to “behave” before taking the argument outside, like two estate agents leaving their office Christmas party after ruining everyone’s evening by getting too competitive at beer pong.
Only making the whole thing more bizarre was the fact that both men were in agreement: Trent Alexander-Arnold should be in England’s squad for the summer’s European Championship. Neville, however, has a hunch – and it is literally just that, a feeling, a sense, a prediction, but no certainty – that Southgate will leave out the Liverpool right-back for fear of him potentially being exposed out of possession by the better teams.
Carragher was incredulous at such a suggestion, fairly pointing out that Alexander-Arnold has been defensively sound enough to win Champions League and Premier League titles, albeit slightly undermining his point by proposing that the 22-year-old’s ability on the ball make him well suited to coming off the bench in a midfield role.
All this culminated 24 hours later with a performance from Alexander-Arnold that proved both men right in Liverpool’s 3-1 defeat to Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final.
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