Southgate can’t keep Henderson in England frame – Newcastle, Villa, Liverpool players would fume | OneFootball

Jordan Henderson must not be selected by Gareth Southgate for England again

Gareth Southgate keeping the England door open for Saudi Arabia-bound Jordan Henderson would send an awful message and make a mockery of the manager’s words.

The hope is that Gareth Southgate is simply keeping his theoretical options rather than the door itself open. After almost seven years as England manager, the true litmus test of his credibility, integrity and principles has been set.

If Jordan Henderson is named in his next squad for the September fixtures against Ukraine and Scotland, it would be farcical.

Should the departing Liverpool captain make any Three Lions selection thereafter, it would be unjustifiable and indefensible.

Henderson has already tried to gauge the impact his imminent move to Al-Ettifaq would have on those international prospects. The reported response from Southgate was characteristically non-committal and neutral, with ‘no guarantees’ offered either way to a 33-year-old who ranks eighth for most caps under the current manager (48).

That should not be held against an individual whose professional and public stance on most matters is to shuffle further back into his seat on the fence. Southgate tends to communicate his true position through actions rather than words.

But telling Henderson his move to Saudi Arabia ‘will not impact his place in the England squad’ (The Athletic) must be nothing more than lip service offered before an uncomfortable but necessary kiss and break-up. Picking the midfielder again would make a mockery of a number of things, not least everything Southgate has said and done during a transformative reign.

Leaving aside the grand moralising which Henderson has invited with his latest career move, the footballing issues are clear. Joining a side which finished seventh last season, nine points clear of the relegation zone but 22 off the AFC Champions League qualification pace, with a negative goal difference, no more than two consecutive wins at any stage, a top scorer on eight goals, an average attendance lower than five National League clubs and a failed Premier League manager comes with career consequences. He cannot expect to have his cash-soaked cake and eat it at every international break.

Jordan Henderson has accepted an offer to move to Saudi Arabia

Southgate must know how lamentable it would be, how feeble and hypocritical it would make him look, how significantly it would undermine the messages he has painstakingly tried to get across, to choose Henderson based on what he did in 2018, 2021 and 2022 while ignoring what he has done in 2023.

No-one can take away those World Cup and European Championship contributions made by a player joint-22nd for all-time England appearances. Henderson has been a crucial player for his country and one of the precious few good enough to navigate those bleak post-Euro 2016 days with his stock not just intact but enhanced.

But Southgate must draw the line there and move on.

The England manager has long been beaten with the wrong stick by his critics. The continued backing of Harry Maguire and Kalvin Phillips despite their lack of Manchester-based playing time has attracted condemnation which almost always misses the point. Southgate has his favourites but no successful international manager doesn’t. It’s a fundamental, unavoidable part of a uniquely challenging role.

But that accidentally damning line Southgate offered in February 2017, that “I never pick on reputation – form has to come into it”, is looming awkwardly in the background. Any selection for Henderson from now could only be based on reputation. Henderson joining a Championship-standard club at best – and that is an incredibly flattering comparison for Al-Ettifaq – makes it so. His form for them is redundant. The level to which he has stooped is that low. Southgate will undoubtedly watch from afar but gauging elite performance and fitness when competing for places with Ibrahim Mohannashi, Faisal Al-Ghamdi and Ali Abdullah Hazazi is pointless and irrelevant.

The attempts to rationalise Henderson’s decision in footballing terms have already begun. As one national newspaper had it: ‘Southgate is keen for Henderson to get regular football this season, something which might not have been the case if he stayed at Liverpool.’ But that argument holds no water when Maguire, Phillips and others have remained in the England picture even as their club prospects have suffered.

And Jurgen Klopp’s desperation to keep his captain hardly suggests a plan to phase him out during Liverpool’s midfield rebuild.

“I’m not going to say we won’t pick a player from the Championship because that could happen but it’s far more difficult to assess his level,” Southgate once said in explaining why those first clamours for Jack Grealish were being ignored in 2018.

“You see certain parts of the game but not others. Not the physicality at times, nor the tactical discipline,” Southgate added then. “That’s another level in the Premier League – the speed, the pace. He’s a player we know all about, he’s a player we track, but that last bit of evidence that could give you confidence to pick him at the moment we won’t see.”

It is a different case in that Henderson has established a body of evidence over numerous major tournaments and qualification campaigns which Southgate feels he can trust above all else. But that becomes immaterial when he plays and trains week in, week out at such a vastly inferior quality.

“What’s the best way to judge our players? The Champions League,” is another point Southgate has laboured before. Henderson joining a club which has only played in the Asian equivalent twice, and not at all since defeat after one qualifying game in 2012, must effectively retire him.

The message picking a barely half-cooked Henderson would send to those players on the periphery, to Joe Willock, Jacob Ramsey, Harvey Elliott, Morgan Gibbs-White and so many others excelling against far better players on much more easily-defined platforms, would be incredibly damaging. If a Serie A title winner and Champions League semi-finalist in Fikayo Tomori can be continually overlooked for reasons legitimate or otherwise, it is impossible to countenance any more caps for Henderson.