Southgate is going to wreck Stones' international career before it has begun, by pushing him into midfield. If he was comfortable playing in the screening role Pep Guardiola would of already done that during the course of last season imo.
He sort of has.
In possession we set up to have a defensive structure of 3-2, and when we play 4 at the back, that means 1 CB, usually Stones, stepping up into midfield next to Yaya. There's a good video of Gundogan explaining this doing some TV work during his injury.
So just because Pep hasn't named him as a defensive midfielder, doesn't mean he hasn't stepped into midfield during our games, and this is a friendly, it's a perfect chance to experiment.
It will be completely different under Southgate and it will be more prone to failure by pushing Stones in to midfield, in England's set up. England are not a fluid side.
The problem for me is that he isn't good enough defensively for centre back, at least not for us anyway. Don't get me wrong, I am sure he's good enough to be centre back for England when his competition is chumps like smalling and when they play fairly defensively anyway but the way we play I think he's miles off being good enough defensively. He's either going to have to improve dramatically defensively, adapt to play that role in front of the defence or there's a good chance he's going to be on his way in a year or so IMO.That's because he's good on the ball for a centerback, not good on the ball in general. It's easy to break through the lines from CB because no one is picking you up, Harry Maguire does it all the time and he's an absolute donkey. Even at RB he stood out like a sore thumb for his lack of actual technical ability and mobility because the required level to play there is so much higher than at CB and midfield is even higher due to the pressure coming from all directions.
Stones is a £50m ball playing centerback, sticking him in midfield to play the Phil Jones role is just a massive waste of talent, just like when we tried to do it with Ledley King and just like when we tried to do it with Wio.
The problem for me is that he isn't good enough defensively for centre back, at least not for us anyway. Don't get me wrong, I am sure he's good enough to be centre back for England when his competition is chumps like smalling and when they play fairly defensively anyway but the way we play I think he's miles off being good enough defensively. He's either going to have to improve dramatically defensively, adapt to play that role in front of the defence or there's a good chance he's going to be on his way in a year or so IMO.
It would help, I'm sure. Big year for him though and if we don't get another centre back in and Kompany has more injury problems then it's going to be difficult for him to show the improvement he needs playing alongside Otamendi or Kolarov. Hopefully we sign a top cb and there will always be someone he can learn from alongside him although the flip side of that is that he might then get a lot less game time.Perhaps if he got the opportunity to play alongside a decent centre back for a run of games we may see that dramatic improvement.
Said it for a while that I believe Stones could play the pivot role. If Otamendi and Vinny are both fit it's highly unlikely that Stones would start over the, anyway. Playing him there provides us with defensive stability as well as the incisive passing needed to cut through the opposition.