Jadon Sancho's form not good enough for England call up but he is in the squad: Gareth Southgate

England head coach Gareth Southgate has admitted that Jadon Sancho’s form hasn’t been good enough to earn an England call-up but included him in the recent squad because he believes in the youngster. The 21-year-old joined Manchester United this summer from Borussia Dortmund for a reported GBP 73 million transfer fee. However, he hasn’t been able to carry over the fine form he had displayed at Borussia Dortmund. Also, he hasn’t been able to establish a regular place in the playing XI at Old Trafford.

Sancho rose to the limelight during his four years in Germany. He managed to score 43 goals and registered 52 assists for Dortmund since joining the club in 2017. However, since returning to England to join the Red Devils, his form hasn’t been great.

“Does he deserve to be in on these performances over the last few weeks? Well probably not,” Southgate said of the former Manchester City youngster.

“But I think we feel we have invested in Jadon over a period of time, we believe he can get to a high level.

“I would like some time with him to chat with him and help that process that’s going on at Manchester United as well and I think for him to feel that we have belief in him at this point is a good message.

“So again we’re talking about there’s no perfect solution here and you could easily throw another name at me that we’ve left out in the past and say, ‘well you didn’t deal with them in the same way’.

“We try to individually do the right thing at the right time, send the right message and sometimes the right message is to leave a player out and maybe they respond and that’s the right thing but we feel with Jadon at this time it is important for us to keep him with us.”

The English Premier League and the Bundesliga is a different ball game. The Premier League is much more physical and you get very less time on the ball compared to the German league, therefore Sancho might need a bit of time to adjust to the new playing environment.

Meanwhile, Solskjaer has a plethora of attacking options at his disposal and if the promising youngster doesn’t get himself back on track quickly he could fall out of favour. However, the youngster has age on his side and is extremely talented enough to overcome the current difficulties.

Asked if Sancho’s early United form had been a concern, the England manager replied: “With Jadon I’m not surprised, really.

“The Bundesliga is totally different, Dortmund is a big club but Manchester United is one of the biggest in the world.

“There’s some adaptation to that, there’s a definite adaptation to the league, you’re not going to get the goals and assists numbers anywhere near in our league, that you are in the Bundesliga.

“There are some very good teams but also it’s a good league for young players to develop him because there are some teams that aren’t at that level.

“Our league, every game is intense and tough and he’s probably just starting to realise that.”