AT the last Euros, it was Kalvin Phillips. A year-and-a-half ago in Qatar, it was Jordan Henderson. While Declan Rice has been a constant at the heart of the England midfield, the identity of the player playing alongside him has been something of a moveable feast.

With Phillips and Henderson out of the picture, whoever Gareth Southgate chose to play alongside Rice in Germany was going to cause controversy. Kobbie Mainoo? Too young. Adam Wharton? Too inexperienced. Conor Gallagher? Too unproven at the very highest level. Trent Alexander-Arnold? Well, he’s a full-back, isn’t he?

The alternative option, and one that would appear to have the support of plenty of fans, would be to drop Jude Bellingham back into a deeper-lying midfield role, with Phil Foden moving to the ‘number ten’ spot and either Anthony Gordon or Cole Palmer starting on the left-hand side. All very adventurous; all very un-Gareth Southgate.

To be fair to the England boss, Bellingham’s excellence in an advanced-midfield role in Sunday’s win over Serbia has probably settled any debate about a shift of position for the remaining two group games at least, so having plumped for Alexander-Arnold at the weekend, there is every chance the 25-year-old will find himself back in midfield for Thursday’s second group game with Denmark.

It is not necessarily a role that comes naturally to the Liverpudlian, although he insists it is not something that has been sprung on him in the last few weeks. With Phillips and Henderson’s powers having been on the wane for quite a while now, Alexander-Arnold has long been earmarked for a potential change of position.

“I was prepared,” said Alexander-Arnold, in the wake of the Serbia game. “Not just through myself, but especially the manager and (assistant manager) Steve Holland have worked very hard over the past year for me to understand and know the role that I’m being asked to do.

“I tried to contribute as much as I could for the team. I was told, it was explained what my role would be, trying to execute it to the best of my ability and contribute to the win.

“So, hopefully the manager and staff will analyse the game back and see it, but the most important thing is to win and hopefully I contributed to that.”

Alexander-Arnold can play in midfield. His experiences at full-back mean he is adept at the defensive side of the game, and his technical ability, particularly when it comes to passing, means he should not be fazed by a move into midfield.

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The more pertinent question is whether playing as a central-midfielder gets the best out of him, or whether it is really a case of a square peg being forced into a round hole when there are other, less makeshift, midfield options within the squad.

With Liverpool, Alexander-Arnold tends to be at his best when he is firing long-range passes over the opposition defence for his team-mates to run onto. That is relatively easy to do from the full-back position, where the long, cross-field ball is generally always an option. It is much harder to execute from a central-midfield berth, where intricate, threaded through balls tend to be needed rather than 50-yard passes, especially when faced with the kind of massed defence that England encountered against Serbia, and that they are also likely to face against Denmark and Slovenia in their remaining group games.

It can also be argued that Alexander-Arnold’s preferred passing approach does not really suit the players who are playing in front of him. Bukayo Saka could probably break onto the kind of long balls that Alexander-Arnold tends to play, but galloping clear of a deep-lying defence is not really Harry Kane’s game and it doesn’t come particularly naturally to Phil Foden either.

On a couple of occasions against Serbia, Alexander-Arnold played through balls that went to waste, and while he reined himself in reasonably well in order to link up with Rice and Bellingham, England were just as effective when Gallagher came on to replace him for the final quarter of the game.

That said, though, Southgate will be understandably reluctant to change a winning team, and it would still be a huge surprise if Alexander-Arnold was not given another opportunity to settle into his new position against Denmark.

“I thought he (Alexander-Arnold) was good,” said the England boss, after the Serbia game. “I have to say, he’s been really diligent in getting his positioning right.

“Obviously, Jude goes forward a lot, so I thought Trent adapted and adjusted to his positioning really well. He used the ball well, and obviously had a good effort on goal.

“Trent had to cover a lot of spaces, and that’s not a role he’s done very often at all so I thought he showed great discipline.”