A move to perennial Champions League winners Real Madrid was supposed to afford Trent Alexander-Arnold a new start, and yet a little over three months after departing Liverpool , familiar questions are being asked of the most brilliantly esoteric right back on the planet. Is he a better fit in midfield than in defense? What should his role be with England ?

That latter issue has reared its head once more with Thomas Tuchel opting against calling up Alexander-Arnold for England's World Cup qualifiers at home to Andorra and away to Serbia . This was not an outright dispensing with the Real Madrid man, with Tuchel at pains to frame this less as a dropping and more as "the moment for him to settle and find his rhythm" in the Spanish capital. The England manager had acknowledged that

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