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After an embarrassing Nations League campaign, many are questioning whether Gareth Southgate is indeed ‘the one’ to take England to the Qatar World Cup in November. Failing to win all three of their Nations League games this camp, a harrowing 4-0 defeat at home to Hungary and a last place position in their group has left England supporters wondering whether Southgate’s tenure has run its course. I think that it is rather unlikely that Southgate will be replaced so close to the World Cup, and to be quite honest, I don’t think that this would benefit the team at all.    Nations League Campaign To start, let’s have a look at England’s recent woeful run of Nations League games. England are in Group 3, alongside Hungary, Germany and Italy. So granted it’s not the easiest of groups for England to find themselves in, however surely as one of the favourites for the World Cup (which Italy haven’t even qualified for) England should not be finding themselves in the position they cu...

Blackpool forward Jake Daniels is the first English professional football player to come out as gay since 1990. Jake is a 19-year-old forward that plays for Blackpool Football Club – oh and he’s gay. I say that nonchalantly because it isn’t a big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. Ian Ladyman said it best when he commented that when he refers to Jake Daniels in the future, he will be referring to him as a footballer and a footballer only. When the news broke that a male professional footballer had announced that he was gay, the first thing I did was take a deep breath and open Twitter. I was expecting a huge back lash of homophobic content, but I was pleasantly surprised. There were barely any negative comments or responses to the news. In this day and age ‘coming out’ is still accompanied with overwhelming anxiety, fear and often heartache rather than as a celebration of freedom, personhood and clarity. The response to Jake’s story has perhaps shown that this may no longer be the ca...