Thomas Tuchel has horribly misjudged Morgan Gibbs-White

“It makes no sense to nominate three, four, five, No 10s,” was Thomas Tuchel’s explanation for omitting Morgan Gibbs-White from his latest England squad before Cole Palmer withdrew. “It just does not help anyone.” There are two obvious issues with that assessment from England’s manager. The first is that, as anyone who watched Gibbs-White this year knows, he is not simply a No 10. He drifts left at least as much as Morgan Rogers. He starts from deep at least as much as Eberechi Eze. He scores as much in the league as… well, Erling Haaland in 2026. The second problem: Tuchel has nominated four No 10s if we reason that Gibbs-White initially sat behind Palmer, Rogers, Eze and Bellingham in the queue. And Gibbs-White has performed better than all of the three English-based players in that list over at least the last nine months. If this were a pure meritocracy, he would be a fixture. The bad news is that Gibbs-White is no longer the outright top Premier League goalscorer in 2026; Haaland drew level with him this weekend. The good news is that he is still the highest-scoring midfielder in Europe’s top five leagues over the same period. And scoring goals isn’t really in his top two responsibilities at Nottingham Forest. I think that there is a basic misunderstanding of what Gibbs-White actually is nowadays, one that Tuchel may well be guilty of sharing. He was absolutely bought as a luxury player by Forest in 2022, the creative spark and the landmark signing of a first summer following promotion. You may remember the outcry over a transfer fee that had potential to rise to £40m. Forest have got their money’s worth several times over. Cole Palmer has decided he needed to manage his load instead (Photo: Getty) That creativity is clearly still integral. Gibbs-White has an ability to see and play passes that no other club teammate possesses – his flick to Igor Jesus for the winner at Villa Park last weekend is a perfect recent example. Only Pascal Gross has created more chances in this nascent Premier League season, probably a factor of Gibbs-White taking on a new role under Oliver Glasner. But there is no luxury to be accommodated by the hard work of others. Gibbs-White is now Forest’s captain on the field (club captain Ryan Yates is featuring less and less). Ask anybody within Forest’s coaching staff, under this and previous regimes, and they will tell you that it is Gibbs-White’s work rate that surprised them most. That is what makes the “How many No 10s?” discussion look derivative. This season, Gibbs-White has covered the most distance of any Forest player. Last season, no player sprinted more in the team. He orchestrates Forest’s pressing and leads by example. Then when Forest win it back, he is expected to be the creative force and the goalscorer. And he enjoys that responsibility too. The oddity of Gibbs-White’s reputation under Tuchel is that it strikes as entirely backward. He was called into the squad in September and October 2025 when, by his own admission, Gibbs-White was enduring his hardest period since joining the club (not helped by having three managers in as many months, each asking for different things from him). Then, just as he began to produce the best form of his career to drag Forest through their chaos, he went off the England radar. Gibbs-White is now 26 and has an 88-minute international career. The England absences have stung him personally because he firmly believes he has been overlooked in favour of those who he has outperformed. You would struggle to form a cogent argument in retort to that opinion. Read more Analysis: The seven big surprises in England’s first squad since World Cup Pete Hall: Thomas Tuchel is deluded for doubling down on England DNA comments It is also true that we are likely discussing the 25th or 26th place in a squad of 26 and as such some will call this over-analysis. Who cares who the person is in every England squad who becomes your pointless answer several years on? To which the right answer is: Gibbs-White cares and we should care. Tuchel picked a World Cup squad on his terms rather than judging purely on club form and he fell short. He picked Palmer this week and Palmer decided he needed to manage his load instead. Now he has picked an attacking midfielder who is versatile, dependable, has been the highest-performing English Premier League player in his position over the last 12 months and has cut short his own family holiday because he desperately wants to prove his worth. This is Gibbs-White’s chance to show Tuchel that he was wrong for so long and got it right eventually.