Southampton forward Charlie Austin leads Englishmen in goals through all competitions. Why isn’t he getting capped for England?
Charlie Austin enters the international break with eight goals in all competitions. Five of those came in the Premier League. Another two stamped Southampton’s authority on Sparta Praha to kick off the Europe League. And of course, his goal in the EFL Cup helped lift the Saints over Sunderland at its most defensive. Yet barring a major shift in Gareth Southgate’s selection, Charlie Austin will spend the international break at home, watching England play from the comfort of his living room or perhaps a hospitality box at Wembley.
For shame, really.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Austin is a world-class striker, or perhaps even one of the best in England. But the 27 year old has shown, across all ages and all levels of the game, that he is good for the one thing for which strikers are paid, scoring goals. Five in the League with less than a third of the season elapsed puts him on pace to finish well above joint team leaders Graziano Pelle and Sadio Mane, who bagged 10 apiece. It puts him on pace to approach, if not surpass, the 20 goal mark, which no Saint has hit in the Premier League since James Beattie in 2002-03.
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More than that, Charlie Austin enters on a run of form quite unmatched by any English player in the League or elsewhere; 5 league goals in 10 appearances, 1 Europa league goal in 3 appearances. On a very crude basis of probability, we can expect Austin to bag one every other game. I don’t know of many other players, English or otherwise, who can say that in this league.
Gareth Southgate, of course, should know this; after all, he’s paid to, and to his great credit he seems to have made a concerted effort to get round the Premiership and do some first-hand scouting. Yet it would seem from the outside looking in that mere form is a secondary concern in choosing who will get the ultimate honour in English football.
Some, it seems, are Too Big To Drop. Wayne Rooney is one such example here, forced into an awkward role as a central midfielder to compensate for his increasingly worn-out legs. Jamie Vardy is perhaps another, having lost the form that made him the hottest near-30something in the League last season but retained his place among the Three Lions.
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From a marketing perspective, it makes sense; fans tune in to the international matches out of pride, yes, but big names on the team-sheet fill seats and television sets the world over. Rooney is a household name with years of history; Jamie Vardy, not so much, but his star has risen with Leicester’s victory last year.
Charlie Austin, whatever his level on the pitch, doesn’t approach the Rooney-Vardy-Rashford level of name-recognition off of it. On the day, marketability trumps form in the eyes of the FA and a former bricklayer-turned-footballer doesn’t make the cut.
England take on Scotland on Remembrance Day, in a match they should win easily. With the withdrawal of Fraser Forster, a single Southampton player will walk out onto the pitch. For the moment, big-club bias and mass-market appeal has won the day. But it would be a terrible injustice for England and Gareth Southgate to ignore their proven goal machine in Southampton for too much longer.