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Southgate takes caution a little too far to blunt England's attacking threat

<span>Photograph: Eddie Keogh for The FA/Shutterstock</span>
Photograph: Eddie Keogh for The FA/Shutterstock

How many holding midfielders is enough holding midfielders? If one holding midfielder is holding the space, can a second holding midfielder hold the same space, or is there technically no space left to hold? And while we’re at it, how much more is there left of this?

To their credit Gareth Southgate’s England team made an impressively committed attempt to answer these questions on a mild, crisp, occasionally hypnotic night in Copenhagen.

This has not been an easy period for the national team. England came here depleted by injury, team‑hotel‑idiocy and an unavoidable lack of fitness. Still, though, it was deathly stuff in Denmark, as Southgate again sent out a team with a deep double-pivot in midfield, this time married up with three central defenders just behind.

Related: Experimental England fail to click in Nations League draw with Denmark

This is becoming chronic. Southgate isn’t just picking a tried hand of defensive midfielders – he’s seeking them out, blooding them and then, in the case of Kalvin Phillips, clipping their wings. Phillips played well here, showed no nerves and looked an excellent footballer. But he was also dealt a puzzling hand, confined to deep covering and shuttling, the tactical equivalent of a second pair of thick woolly socks on a day when one really would have been enough. Talent is being given its head. But is it also being wasted?

It is hard to understand why it took 76 minutes to get Jack Grealish on the pitch in a game crying out for a change of angle and tempo. Or indeed how it is possible for a successful international manager not to see the obvious cause and effect of selection and outcome. Just how fearful is it possible to be of the hypothetical possibility of the odd Danish counterattack?

At the end Southgate was almost maniacally upbeat, talking a little bizarrely in his press conference about the many positives, not to mention the four prized points (and one goal: a penalty) his team would take from this Nordic double-header.

Perhaps there is a pleasure to be had from this kind of annihilating caution. Watching from high in the red plastic seats it was tempting to wonder if Eric Dier could be encouraged to come striding out of defence into the space just in front to become a revolutionary third holding player, the final peg in Southgate’s vision of Total Defensive Midfield.

The Parken is a steeply banked glass and steel rectangle. For the occasion the Danish FA had stretched over one end a large flag depicting a blond-bearded Viking soldier, sword unsheathed, mighty biceps rippling.

It proved a misleading advertisement for the spectacle to come. England were static in the opening minutes, midfield and defence falling into a desultory two‑ply shield. The white shirts flickered towards one another then fell back into their pre-plotted patterns.

The lines refused to mingle. Declan Rice floated vaguely to the right of Phillips, shielding things that didn’t need shielding, defending hypotheticals. Three times Conor Coady played interesting cross-field passes beyond the Danish cover to find his wing-backs. Otherwise England were a stodgy, indigestible substance. There was at least time to wonder. How exactly did this youthful, unscarred team get to a place where it is necessary to select two right-backs, three centre-halves and two defensive midfielders for a mildly tricky-looking Nations League group game?

These have been difficult times for Southgate, a manager who has above all sought to create a kind of moral architecture around his England team. Greek island escapades, bubble-busting liaisons, the need to wheel out his mildly-disappointed-village-curate manner in successive England press conferences: none of this has helped to reset the mood music in an England team playing only its 12th game in two years.

In times of trouble look for familiar things. The back three is the armature around which Southgate’s early gains were built. The two-man defensive pivot is a kind of personal safety harness. Is this enough? At a time when football has basically been reduced to a fun distraction, when Southgate has a frenetic two years to the end of his contract, defensive overkill seems a strange policy.

Not least when there are attacking riches being spurned. In the opening 35 minutes Jadon Sancho, one of the most exciting young attacking midfielders in Europe, touched the b all 10 times. England’s twin holding players touched it 50 times. Sometimes numbers tell you things.

Throughout that first half England’s greatest threat was Trent Alexander-Arnold, who found space on the right but was a little short in his final pass. Despite all the holding and the shielding, at the break Denmark had managed five shots at goal to England’s one.

Related: Denmark 0-0 England: Uefa Nations League – as it happened

The second half was a little different, but not much. Mason Mount came on and looked bright, as did Grealish. Both appeared to enjoy, and indeed look forward to, having possession of the ball. Space began to open up. Harry Kane had a shot cleared off the line at the end.

Even as England passed the ball with a sense of purpose in the final moments, the lasting impression was of time and opportunities wasted. All football managers are cautious. It is a good quality. But it can be a trap, too. Southgate has begun to luxuriate in his own a little too much.