Kelly & Agyemang should stay on the bench – but England still need to make changes for Women's Euros final

For the third consecutive major tournament in a row, England have made the final, but they haven’t half made heavy weather of it. Against both Sweden in the quarter-finals and Italy on Tuesday, the Lionesses needed timely interventions from the bench, courtesy of an old hero and a new one – Chloe Kelly and Michelle Agyemang.

Their last-gasp heroics, whether from the penalty spot or from open play, have saved England and steered them in dramatic fashion towards a rematch of the 2023 Women’s World Cup final against Spain. Two years ago, Spain won deservedly, and the substitutes aside, England have been short of their best since the end of the group stage. So should Sarina Wiegman bring Kelly or Agyemang into the starting line-up? And if not, what does need to change?

Chloe Kelly & Michelle Agyemang have been England’s heroes – but neither should start

Kelly is no stranger to her status as England’s saviour, but she has had to work hard to regain it in the four years since her extra-time goal against Germany secured the 2022 European Championship.

Having lost her place at Manchester City and in the England side, she left Manchester in acrimonious circumstances and had to work her way back into form with Arsenal, scoring twice towards the back end of the Women’s Super League season, starting in the Champions League final and earning a spot in Wiegman’s squad once more. The 27-year-old has had a long and frustratingly winding road back towards the limelight.

Kelly’s teenage Arsenal team-mate Agyemang, on the other hand, is England’s new sensation. She has only started three WSL games, all on loan at Brighton last season, and wasn’t even on Wiegman’s radar six months ago. Now, her composed finishing has twice rescued England when on the brink of elimination.

As remarkable as their combined coolness has been in situations in which many players might panic, there are two arguments against either starting against Spain despite a certain degree of clamouring for either to be elevated, and the first hinges on their form across the season relative to starters such as Lauren Hemp, Lauren James and Alessia Russo.

There is a reason that those players, less impactful on final scores though they may have been against Sweden and Italy, have their starting berths. They all possess and excellent sense of movement and space, superb technical quality and the ability to win matches.

Russo scored more than twice as many league goals last year as Kelly and Agyemang combined, and her hold-up play and knack for finding pockets of room in the channels and bringing her team-mates into play has led to many of England’s best chances. Agyemang looks like a huge prospect, but Russo’s experience could easily be vital, and Agyemang has hardly ever played a full 90 minutes.

James and Hemp are tremendous creative forces who offer penetration and the ability to take defences to pieces with their movement. Kelly can do that too, of course, but she has had a relatively rocky year or two and is only now getting back towards her very best.

The biggest reason not to bring either Kelly or Agyemang into the starting eleven, of course, is simply that bringing them off the bench is working. The injection of energy and threat they bring into the game just as legs are starting to tire has been a difference maker, and their nervelessness under immense pressure precisely what’s needed in the dying minutes of knock-out matches.

Wiegman has found a winning formula which has dragged England out of the dirt twice already, and tinkering with a system that works before a major final is seldom a smart idea. Kelly and Agyemang – not to mention Beth Mead and Aggie Beevor-Jones, the other regular subs in this tournament – have been given a niche which suits their skill set and mentality perfectly, and England’s first-choice front line already has the quality and class to win games before they’re needed. But that doesn’t mean that nothing has to change.

England’s midfield is the concern ahead of the Euro 2025 final

It may seem strange to suggest that nothing needs to change up front for England given the difficulties they had in finding goals in their previous two matches, but this is the same attacking set-up with put a strong Dutch side to the sword and smashed six past Wales. The problem against Sweden and Italy wasn’t the front four. It was the midfield.

Against Sweden, England’s midfielders were isolated far too easily in transition by Sweden’s dogged and determined pressing game, and possession was persistently turned over in dangerous areas as a result.

Against Italy, meanwhile, England were not only guilty of giving the ball away in the centre of the pitch too often, but there was frequently a yawning gap between the midfield and attack, making it harder to pick through Italy’s disciplined low block.

Spain are unlikely to sit deep, which should help to condense the midfield and make England’s life a little easier in that regard, or at least help Wiegman to keep her players close enough to each other to keep the number of low percentage passes and two-on-ones from the opposition to a bare minimum.

But given how good Spain’s midfield is and the incisiveness with which they can use possession, it’s vital that England find a way to get more bodies into midfield more often, plugging gaps and stopping Spain from picking them off on the counter-attack or simply dominating the ball. There isn’t much use having a super attack if play never reaches the final third.

This isn’t really the fault of the starting midfielders, Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway and Ella Toone, but more a function of England being a team whose defence stays in deeper areas and whose attack tends to push a long way forward.

The issue was especially noticeable against Sweden, when Toone pressed forward and Walsh, in particular, was left covering huge areas of the pitch entirely on her own. When she got the ball, she was a long way from the next player and forced to take risks. When she was defending, she was given a truly thankless task.

Toone pushing that far forward in possession against Spain would leave England in constant danger on the counter if the defence doesn’t push up to constrict the space in between the two lines. Against Sweden and Italy, England got away with it. Spain would probably punish such generosity with territory far more harshly.

England don’t need to make changes to the line-up or sweeping strategic adjustments – they just need to make sure they keep their positional discipline and avoid playing into Spain’s hands. And if that doesn’t work, they can always just bring Kelly and Agyemang on. Based on what we’ve seen so far, that should sort it all out.