Nathaniel Clyne should win his first England cap on Saturday because he is simply the best English right back at present, however by not selecting him Roy Hodgson will send out the wrong message.
Before we start I should clarify that Nathaniel Clyne should play for England only if he is the best man for the job and his performances both last season and especially this have shown that to be the case, however in the last squad Roy Hodgson sent out the wrong message to potential England players by picking Calum Chambers ahead of Clyne after jumping him out of the U21 squad.
I have nothing against Chambers, indeed i think he will go on to be one of the best players not only in the Premier League but for his country over the next decade, but there were several reasons why he should not have got the nod over Clyne in the last round of games, firstly was experience, barely 25 games at Premier League level back then secondly was the fact that he wasn't being picked for his club at full back, thirdly was that he was not an attacking full back, of the type we needed in those games to break down stubborn defences.
Of course Chambers had two decent games, but he wasn't the overlapping marauding full back we needed in those games his strength is defending. Put bluntly I could have played right back in those two games and England would still have won, but we needed more than either I or Chambers could add going forward.
Now Roy Hodgson has the chance to put things right and give Clyne the chance to add his attacking skills to the England side and this is the right thing to do on all fronts, but Hodgson has to send the right message to both his squad and indeed England hopefuls that players will be slected on merit, not because they happen to play for a big club, Chambers had only been at Arsenal a month or so yet suddenly he was that much better a player than he was last season when he never got a sniff of a full cap,indeed was mainly second choice to Clyne, Hodgson needs to reverse a trend that has been going on too long now and that is the culture of it is not who you are but who you play for.
If he does that then perhaps Hodgson will start to see performances improve as he picks players untainted by the lure of money but who still want success and dream of playing for their country, for the past two decades starting with Terry Venables the England squad has been about elitism and being part of a clique rather than about individual ability, no England manager has been brave enough to stop that since.
Roy Hodgson could be that man, if only because he is the man who is presiding over an England team that is no longer competitive at the top level, a generation has come through that has not stepped up to the plate, at 18 the likes of Walcott, Wilshere, Rodwell and a host of others looked like they would become World beaters, something ruined them, the common denominator seems to be a move to a big club before they are ready, In wilshere's case he did start at Arsenal, but as he approaches his 23rd birthday in a few weeks time, he has started only 76 Premier league games for Arsenal plus another 18 as sub ok you can add another 14 for Bolton on loan, but that is not the experience that you would expect a 23 year old to have, in contrast Clyne who is only 9 months older, has played twice than number of games in the Championship for Palace and then in the Premier for Saints.
The message is clear we have to rid the England squad of cliques we have to bring through a generation of players who look on playing for England as an honour and not just as a week away and a chance to show off your new car to the rest of the squad and compare wage slips.
If Hodgson dos not act quick then he will merely allow the problem to continue and we will lose Calum Chambers generation to a culture of greed, that being a professional footballer is about money and being able to wear your baseball cap sideways on and no one will laugh at you because you have a Bentley.
We need a back to basics new culture, one where players see playing for their country as a matter of pride and not as an inconvenience.
By picking Nathaniel Clyne, Roy Hodgson will start to show that he is part of the solution and not the problem, up until recently I thought that Hodgson was perhaps unlucky in that he inherited a squad where the good players like Gerrard etc were too old, the players like Walcott etc who should now be the vanguard had not progressd and all he really had where a few promising youngsters who were not quite ready, that being the case I cut him some slack.
Last time out I saw that he was going the same way as his predecessors, now he needs to get himself back on track and in doing so the next generation of footballers, by picking Clyne he is showing that is about ability not whose club badge you wear, by picking Chambers he showed that he was just picking on club reputation not individuals, if Hodgson now picks Clyne he will perhaps be making a bigger decision than he knows, not only might it be the best for the team, but it might just make sure that Calum Chambers and his contemporaries become the players they promise to be in a few years time and don't just each become another burned out ex promising youngster who has made a big money move but never reached the heights their teenage years promised.