Every time an England squad is named, the same tired rhetoric regarding ‘form’ is regurgitated.

Gareth Southgate has named his first England squad

Another England manager, another England squad and another tired old argument about ‘form players’. The truth is, the England squad is not selected purely on form, nor will it ever be and nor should it be. International football, and football in general, is far more complex than just selecting the players in the best form and expecting them to walk in and repeat that form within a completely new group.

Players form ebbs and flows over the course of a season and over the course of their career. If an England manager selected simply the form players, he would be making wholesale changes every single time he came to naming his squad. This is not feasible and would not lend itself to success. An England manager has to be given the freedom to select the players who he feels will best implement whatever it is he is trying to do.

Take a look at Germany, the 2014 World Cup winners and a national team many would like England to emulate. The likes of Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose are fine examples – as regardless of their club form, Joachim Löw knew he wanted the duo in his Germany team. A couple of years earlier and Spain won their third major international tournament in a row, as Vicente del Bosque stood by Fernando Torres despite his poor form for Chelsea. The striker scored one and assisted another in Spain’s 4-0 victory over Italy in the final.

Germany coach Joachim Löw

Or how about Egidio Arevalo, the 34-year-old Uruguayan midfielder who has been essentially a journeyman throughout his career, bumbling between the leagues of Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil and the US. Yet he is a regular and often captain of the Uruguayan national team, with 81 caps to his name for a country that has finished fourth at a World Cup and won the Copa America in the last 6 years.

The examples go on and on, and there’s a good reason for this. Form is just one of a multitude of factors which have to be taken into account when a manager selects his squad. Didier Deschamps left Alexandre Lacazette, Kevin Gameiro and Karim Benzema out of his squad for the summers European Championship’s, whilst taking Olivier Giroud and Andre-Pierre Gignac, a decision that would be abhorred here in England.

Yet the rest of the world seems to understand this slightly better. Once you appoint a manager, you have to have a degree of trust in them to pick the squad and set the team up. International managers have an extremely short amount of time to actually work with and train with their squad. Developing partnerships and understandings takes time, and chopping and changing the team almost monthly is simply not conducive to making that happen.

Alexandre Lacazette didn’t make France’s Euro 2016 squad

Come the time in which an England manager has to name their squad, there’s always a plethora of players who are mentioned. For Gareth Southgate’s first selection, the likes of Troy Deeney, Curtis Davies, Scott Dann, Sam Clucas, Nathan Redmond, Jason Puncheon and many more have all been described as ‘deserving’ England call-up’s.

Yet, in the build-up to Euro 2016, Danny Drinkwater, Simon Francis and every West Ham player from Aaron Cresswell to Mark Noble were the names thrown about most often. This just goes to show how unfeasible it would be for an international manager to genuinely pick a squad based on form.

One is not saying that an England managers squad selection should not be questioned or scrutinised, or that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their decisions, just that simply beating them with the same old stick of not selecting ‘form players’ is tired, tedious and wholly naive.

Former England manager Roy Hodgson

A distinction ought to be made between not picking players merely on form and picking players on reputation or giving preference to players based on the clubs they are at. The distinction between the two is often blurred, with many people considering them to be the same thing. In fact, they are entirely different issues.

Managers selecting players more readily from certain clubs when they have seemingly shown less than players from a ‘lesser’ clubs is one which understandably irks some supporters.

The selection of the likes of Tom Cleverley, Stewart Downing and Joleon Lescott early in Roy Hodgson’s tenure were questionable, as one suspected that had they been playing for West Brom, Stoke and Sunderland rather than Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City, the trios performances may not have been deemed call-up worthy.

Aston Villa fans hold up a banner directed at Joleon Lescott

In other news, Tony Pulis sends warning to Leeds & comments on Marcelo Bielsa