Gareth Southgate has relied heavily on the three Manchester City players he has in his England squad for the 2024 European Championship.
With four games played in the tournament, the City trio of Phil Foden, Kyle Walker and John Stones have started all four games that have taken the Three Lions to a quarter-final match against Switzerland on Saturday.
Looking ahead to this game, a pundit has made a prediction about one particular City figure in Southgate’s squad and how he could be deployed differently at the weekend.
Paul Merson thinks Gareth Southgate will use Kyle Walker in a different position for England vs Switzerland
While previewing and predicting the scores for all of the upcoming quarter-final matches in a recent column for Sportskeeda, Merson had this to say about Kyle Walker and where he could end up playing against Switzerland.
He said: “Marc Guehi is suspended and I have a funny feeling Gareth will play Kyle Walker as a central defender, with Trent Alexander-Arnold at right-back.
“They have other like-for-like replacements like Lewis Dunk, Ezri Konsa and Joe Gomez, but I think Gareth always plays it safe, so he’ll go with the players who have delivered for him before instead of throwing inexperienced lads into the deep end.”
Southgate has an important decision to make
Even though the City captain has played the majority of his 87 senior England appearances as a right-back, he has been deployed in a centre-back role on several occasions.
This makes it understandable why Merson thinks Southgate will turn to Walker as a replacement for the suspended Guehi rather than the other defensive options in the squad.
Bearing in mind how Micah Richards claimed that the 34-year-old was caught out of position at times during the 2-1 win over Slovakia, perhaps moving Walker into a centre-back role this time around would reduce the risk of this happening again if he’s told to just stay back rather than go forward.