England v Senegal: Back Shaw to lead pass masters treble

Paul Higham
03 December 2022
1 min read

Luke Shaw can enjoy plenty of the ball against Senegal

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Paul Higham has an extra added Bet Builder for England's game on Sunday based on them set to dominate the ball against the African champions.

Senegal have been dominated by opposition possession
England use the wide men when passing it around
Shaw had over 100 pass attempts against Iran
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Nobody is saying this will be easy, but the lack of Sadio Mane for Senegal does severely weaken the African champions as they take on Euro finalists England in the World Cup last 16.

Gareth Southgate does have major selection headaches if you read the extensive coverage of his team choices - but the fact is he's got much more quality available to him than Senegal have in their ranks.

And our angle for Sunday's props column is a Bet Builder focusing in on just how much of the ball England should enjoy against a side that doesn't, from the outside, care too much about the value of possession.

After all, Senegal have had plenty of attempts at goal (41) despite only having more of the ball in one of their three games - with the Netherlands (53%) and even more so Ecuador (61%) having much more possession than the Africans.

So we're expecting England to have a lot of the ball here and showing a patience in possession that a few England sides have managed to display down the years.

It's a talented group though that has players playing for some of the top clubs in the land and top managers who like to keep the ball, so the technique is here too and we're predicting plenty of touches for the defenders in particular.

One of our profitable go-to Bet Builder items has been Luke Shaw's passing numbers, as he currently sits second on the team with 263 pass attempts but leads in per-90 passes with 97.4 as he came off reasonably early against Wales.

Shaw registered 118 passes against Iran, 84 in a messy game against the USA and 61 in just over an hour against Wales and the likely state of this game should be conducive to him having another huge volume of passes.

After returning for England against Wales, I think Kyle Walker could get himself another start here at either right-back or in a back three - I think he plays in either case.

Walker had 98 and 88 passes against Ukraine and Denmark in the Euros, and if he's on the right he'll be getting another massive chunk of the ball and should hit a high number again.

And completing our treble is Declan Rice, who is always patrolling around by his defenders and will always be happy knocking the ball about from his deeper role.

Rice is 8/15 to eclipse 70 pass attempts with Walker 4/6 to do the same and bring us home the win in a slightly unusual punt on the big game.