Lawrie: I can't understand James Ward-Prowse being left out

I managed the under-21s and the B Team but met up with Graham for the first-team games and the difference of international level, of course, is the players are all obviously top class – that’s why they are in the squad.

But one of the big problems is can they play as a team? Are they as good when they are playing with what we would call strangers? They normally would come across each other about twice a season.

As I’ve said before, we had to find out what sort of characters they were off the field.

I look at the present squad – hands up, I don’t really know all of the players – but certainly I feel sorry for the Southampton player who was in the provisional squad, which was named until the European games were over.

Danny Ings was left out of that squad but I was more than a little surprised when James Ward-Prowse was then cut from the 26-man group.

We all know he has not missed a game or been substituted, or come off injured for two whole seasons – which is incredible.

Not only is he a good midfield player, he is probably the best player in the Premier League for set-pieces. International football is no different, at some stage you will get free-kicks just outside the box and possibly a penalty – as well as lots of corners. There is nobody in the game at present better than him regarding them.

To leave him out of the squad altogether, I can’t understand.

But Gareth also surprised everyone by originally naming four right-backs and then replacing Trent Alexander-Arnold with Ben White.

He has been in the news recently with some of the big clubs reportedly interested in him. The timing for him is perfect to get called up.

But the interest from our point of view is he came through the Saints’ academy. He must have a strong attitude because, from what he said, he was put out of the academy.

There is never a nice way to say it but from his account it was a blunt ‘we’re not keeping you on, bye bye’ type of thing.

A lot of players would have vanished and possibly popped up at non-league level, but he obviously had an ‘I’ll show you’ attitude for his career from then on.

To be at Brighton, which in all due respect, is not one of the biggest clubs to normally provide internationals for England, I can imagine when he got the call it would have come with a smile from him to say ‘I’ve shown you lot at Southampton’.

It does show in one respect it’s a good example to young players. Never give up, learn from some of your mistakes early on, work hard and who knows? You could finish up after being kicked out of an academy, a few years later playing for England at Wembley.

As far as the England games go, the fixture whenever we play Scotland is always very special. The Scottish teams with all respect have never really been rated higher than England, but their players worked twice as hard when they played against England to get a result.

My memories are that those games are much more physical than the others. There was a terrific determination from the Scots and I am sure Gareth will remind his players of that.

It’s a pity really that Danny Ings and James Ward-Prowse are not in that game because they would have been facing up against two of their team-mates on the day, in Stuart Armstrong and Che Adams.

Che, after his successful start for the Scots, is now called McAdams in Saints’ dressing room. I am sure there will be other names which cannot be repeated!

I was happy to meet up with a Saints legend this week in Mick Channon. A top racehorse trainer since his football days were over.

Horse racing was always his passion and I remember once when I was laying into the team at half-time after a bad first-half performance, he said in a loud voice ‘gaffer, what you’ve got to understand is it’s just my effing hobby!’.

Even I had to smile at that and said ‘well get on with it’ and they all went out in the second half and won the game.

We had a good laugh about the many memories and things that were said in the dressing room.