Steve Guppy is the one everyone remembers. Most dedicated followers of English football in the late 1990s and early 2000s would also be able to name Jason Wilcox and Steve Froggatt. Then you have your David Dunns, your Alan Thompsons, your Chris Powells. Two decades on, the infamous “England left-sided problem” tends to be evoked more as an exercise in nostalgia, a display of performative recall, than as a long-term failure of systems and imagination that Gareth Southgate may just be in danger of repeating.
A “left-sided David Beckham” was Kevin Keegan’s memorable description of Guppy ahead of his England debut, which sadly would also turn out to be his England swansong, against Belgium in 1999. And over the years, as the tournamen…