Why Chelsea and Man Utd stars will be waiting on tenterhooks after England win vs Serbia

It was Meat Loaf who once sang that two out of three ain’t bad. If Sunday evening’s pedestrian group stage victory over Serbia proved anything, however, it is that when it comes to England’s hopes of winning Euro 2024 - and more specifically, the composition of their midfield unit - two out of three may not prove to be quite enough.

A tepid display in Gelsenkirchen - a city whose identity is deeply entwined with its mining history - saw England hard at graft against the coalface, dulled pickaxes swinging, lungs spluttering up clouds of suspect dust. There were positives to be excavated, of course - Jude Bellingham looked every inch a Kardashian-endorsed mega-galactico incarnate, Marc Guehi barely put a pink boot wrong at the heart of defence, and Declan Rice was sublimely bullish in the engine room - but after an ascendant opening half hour, the Three Lions slumped into a shuffling rhythm of wasted possession and territorial relinquishment.

To that end, one player who is likely to come under more scrutiny than most in the trepidatious aftermath is Trent Alexander-Arnold. The Liverpool talisman was, in an experimental flourish from Gareth Southgate, deployed in the centre of midfield - the hope being that his propensity for creativity and his range of passing would eclipse his relative inexperience, and would solve a lingering foible in England’s otherwise enviable engine room.

While Bellingham and Rice are presumably two of the first names on the Three Lions’ team sheet, finding the pair a suitable accomplice has not been an easy ask. On the evidence of Trent’s showing against Serbia, it is still a problem that needs to be resolved.

For the sake of fairness - and so as to not unnecessarily stoke the embers of agenda-based hysteria - it is worth emphasising that Alexander-Arnold was by no means terrible on Sunday, and there were plenty of others who delivered comparably middling performances. But the most appealing aspect of his game is undoubtedly his distribution, and in that regard, Trent felt a little like a maladjusted trebuchet, his exploratory diagonals and raking punts in behind frequently careering into nothingness like botched space shuttle launches with miscalculated coordinates.

And without his serrated edge, Alexander-Arnold was caught lacking in other ways. There was a reason why, with England under the cosh and their midfield sitting deeper than a giant squid, that Southgate opted to hook the converted full-back and introduce the combative dynamism of ponytailed Duracell bunny Conor Gallagher instead. The hard yards maybe don’t come quite as naturally to Trent.

All of this raises the obvious question as to who Southgate will entrust with that third midfield spot against Denmark on Thursday. Will he persist with the Alexander-Arnold experiment, or will he instead lean into the more agricultural vigour of Gallagher? Will he put his faith in Kobbie Mainoo, so impressive for Manchester United this season, or will he deliver a real plot twist and start Adam Wharton, a player whose rise has been as meteoric as his game is metronomic?

Only time will tell, of course, but if Sunday’s match taught us anything, it’s that we are no closer to a definite answer.