Tomorrow England take on San Marino in a World Cup qualifier and manager Gareth Southgate has picked a squad that doesn’t include Everton defensive duo Micheal Keane and Ben Godfrey.
In some ways the failure of the Three Lions boss to pick these two Everton players is not especially important given that these international matches are proving a real headache with the compressed nature of fixtures this season.
And it also avoids them picking up an injury that would potentially have kept them out of key games during the rest of the Toffees campaign as the team try to secure European football.
Those injuries have been a factor in how the Bleus season has gone and as a result in part at least, of international fixtures Carlo Ancelotti has lost key players like James Rodriguez, Allan and Seamus Coleman for long periods.
However, on the other side of things it would have been good to see the form and performances of two of the Toffees most effective and consistent players this season recognised by the national team manager.
Both Keane and Godfrey have been excellent this campaign, Godfrey in particular has been a revelation and is very much in the running for the Blues player-of-the-season.
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Keane has been getting more influential and has consistently produced for the team over the course of the campaign while Godfrey has added a new dimension to the Toffees backline with his pace, aggression and intensity.
One of the problems with the Blues defence in the past was the lack of physicallity and willingness to go toe-to-toe with opponents.
Basically Everton were just too nice and decent when sometimes you have to be preopared to really battle and intimidate the opposition to win matches.
If there’s one critism of both Keane and Yerry Mina its that they are not those sorts of in-your-face defenders who can intimidate. Ancelotti intimated as much when he was critical of Mina earlier in the season.
Well Godfrey’s arrival has changed that and he and Mason Holgate are certainly not afraid of that confrontation in the trenches.
It would have been good if the outstanding form of these two defenders had been recognised by Southgate insterad of his predictably picking the usual suspects like Eric Dier and Tyrone Mings neither of whom have been any better than the Everton duo.