Alan Shearer: I don't understand Cole Palmer - you have to play for England at every opportunity

At every opportunity you have to go and play for England

I think at every opportunity you have to go and play for England. You can't just turn up for World Cups or Euros.

We don't know, and we're speculating, but it's a lot of players to pull out, isn't it? Declan Rice, I guess, his withdrawal is because of the amount of football he's played. It does look as if he's nursing something. The others, I don't know their situation, but that's a lot of players to be pulling out.

However, what it does do is give others the opportunity to stake their claim. Someone like Morgan Gibbs-White has the chance now because Tuchel's words were, well, there's too many 10s.

Well, one's pulled out. Now he's got his opportunity. You can imagine if he goes in there and does well, scores, puts in a really good performance, then the manager would have to pick him for the next squad. That's the opportunity he's now got.

The one I don't understand is Cole Palmer's withdrawal from the squad. I get that you have to manage your body, but he's not played a lot of football and he's not going to play a lot of football with Chelsea not being in Europe this season.

So - without knowing all of the reasoning - that one is the standout one for me, especially when he wasn't at the World Cup.

England's game against Spain will have something extra

Nations League games are better than friendlies. It was designed to get rid of the friendlies and make it more competitive so I'm for this platform of international football. I certainly think the games are more competitive. Take England for example. They are playing Spain, which I think is far more interesting than them playing a friendly game against no hopers.

I guess any trophy is a nice trophy to try and win, but the one England would want would be the Euros or the World Cup and the World Cup's gone so they now have to prepare for that and all these games are now in preparation for2028 and the Euros on home soil.

England's game on Saturday against Spain will have something extra on it because of what happened to the Three Lions at the World Cup. All the talk and perhaps rightly so until after this game will be how England got knocked out against Argentina and Tuchel's had to answer those questions in his press conference and rightly so. I didn't agree with some of the comments that he said in terms of 99% of the people that he spoke to are not interested in what happened against Argentina, people talk to him about Croatia or Mexico. 

Well, that's not what my friends and people in football were saying. So, it's a big game because of that and they'll want to get that out of their system. England will be desperate to get out onto the pitch again, so we now start talking about what happened in that game rather than the last one against Argentina.

Shearer's England v Spain Prediction: Score draw incoming!

I'm going to say the game will finish 2-2. I think it'll be a really entertaining game. I think it's a great game to start off with. So, I'm going to go score draw between Spain and England on Saturday.

I'm A Celebrity not for me but Rooney would be interesting

If Rooney goes into the jungle, he will just tell it how it is. I think that's the way he is. I think that's why it'll be really, really interesting. Whether that's good or bad, he's a great lad and gets on well with everyone, and the people, whoever else is in there, will get on with him and find him really interesting.

I would never go into the jungle. I could actually see Micah Richards going in and loving it. That wouldn't surprise me if we read that one year. 

Sébastien Pocognoli has got big shoes to fill

Steve Clarke did a really good job for Scotland and felt it was the right time after the World Cup. It's a tough job anyway being the Scotland manager, because I do think that the standards in Scotland have declined rapidly over the years and the expectation of where they can go or where they should be is perhaps a bit higher than what they actually are.

So, I do think Steve did a great job and Sébastien Pocognoli has got big shoes to fill.

You can imagine the reaction if Scotland get beaten on Saturday in the manager's first game in charge. So, for him personally, and again, because of the way they went out of the World Cup, everyone will keep talking about that, very much like England.

They'll need this game to try and get the right result and get people onside and talking about getting back winning ways again.