England may be into the quarter-finals of Euro 2024 but criticism has been rife with Eamon Dunphy among their detractors this tournament.
Gareth Southgate's star-studded side has underwhelmed all competition, struggling against teams with supposedly far inferior individual talent.
They will face Switzerland in the quarter-finals on Saturday evening, with the Swiss coming into that game on the back of an impressive display against Italy. On form, England would have to be considered slight underdogs in that game.
The pressure is on manager Southgate to end their drought in major tournaments which extends all the way back to 1966, but uncertainty remains.
Eamon Dunphy claims Gareth Southgate making same mistake as predecessors
Dunphy was quick to voice his initial concerns with Southgate after their nervy opening 1-0 win against Serbia and he has now noticed a worrying trend with the manager and his predecessors.
Southgate has been conservative in altering his squad, despite the subsequent draws with Denmark and Slovenia and their last-gap escape vs Slovakia in the last 16.
Writing in his column for The Irish Mirror - Dunphy claimed the former defender is guilty of the same habit which cost those who had failed before him.
The habit? Trying to accommodate his best 11 players instead of picking a well-balanced team.
Again and again, England bosses have picked the best 11 players available, instead of picking the best team," Dunphy wrote.
"In Germany at these Euros, what Southgate has been doing is baffling.
"Phil Foden and Bellingham are huge talents but they are effectively both number 10s. Southgate figured you could play two 10s. You can’t.
"He also went with what nerds now call a double pivot of Rice and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
"Alexander-Arnold can deliver superb passes but he isn’t even the second cousin of a midfielder. It was a doomed experiment."
To be fair to Southgate, he learned from his experiment with Alexander-Arnold and subequently dropped the defender from midfield.
However, he has still failed to get some of his best players to fire out of position with Foden among those to struggle.
It was his substitutes, namely Cole Palmer, Eberechi Eze and Ivan Toney, that came to the rescue against Slovakia in extra-time.
Regardless, Southgate is renowned for his conservatism and it would not be a surprise to see him stick to his guns instead of changing up his struggling starting XI against Switzerland.
