Chelsea hold the key to England winning the World Cup according to Paul Merson after Gareth Southgate named his 26-man squad for the tournament.
Despite impressive form over the past month for Graham Potter's side, Blues duo Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Trevoh Chalobah both missed out on selection. Conor Gallagher has, however, done enough to convince Southgate and was the one true shock inclusion in the team.
The 22-year-old has only scored once this season but offers a new dimension to the squad in midfield with a playstyle like few others. Mason Mount and Raheem Sterling were also included whilst Ben Chilwell and Reece James missed out through injury.
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Although Chilwell was always going to miss the tournament after a 'significant' hamstring injury, James has been in a race against time to recover from his own knee problem. The full-back, who was expected to start as first choice at right-back or wing-back, was left out by Southgate, though, and Arsenal legend Paul Merson thinks it's the wrong call.
"I don't see us [England] winning the World Cup without Reece James in it," Merson said. "People will go 'oh he'll only be for for the semi-finals,' who cares? These are fit lads, they aren't going to need four or five weeks to get up to speed.
"If it was Harry Kane, Harry Kane goes. It's as simple as that. That's why there's 26 players. It's to take players that are going to help you in the later stages of the tournament otherwise it would be 23. We haven't got a chance of winning the World Cup without Reece James in our team."
Merson made his point clear in his Daily Star column and James seemed to agree, liking a tweet with the quote in it.
As much as James won't be there and can't be the difference maker, Gallagher can, and Merson loves how he plays and thinks that he can have a huge impact on the squad.
"Whatever the team is going to be there's always someone who comes out of nowhere and plays. It's very rare a team stays the whole way through," he added.
"[Gallagher] has bundles and bundles of energy, what he does is he kick starts everybody else to go. We [England] play at a slow tempo when we play these better teams, it becomes 'you pass, we pass' we need more than that. We need to play the Premier League way and blow teams away.”
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