Gareth Southgate needs to win Euro 2024 to erase nagging doubts over his record

The enduring mystery of Gareth Southgate is how a man of instinctive moderation, who handles any delicate topic as if clearing a minefield, can still divide his country into such extremes of love and rage. Here is someone whose wildest rebellion as an Aston Villa player was, according to former team-mate Paul Merson, the day he parked on a double-yellow line. It is the football equivalent of Theresa May imagining she had been terribly naughty by running through fields of wheat. And yet after eig