It was, Gareth Southgate said, all a bit of a misunderstanding. Dele Alli was not raising his middle finger at the referee after all. He was merely “messing about” with Kyle Walker, the England manager said under interrogation in his post-match press conference last night — “a strange way of communicating,” he said, attempting to draw a line under the matter. And, who knows, perhaps he was, but not too many in Southgate’s audience were convinced. Even Fowler later admitted that one had been a “fantasy” dreamt up by the…

Source: The Times September 04, 2017 23:03 UTC