IT’S going to be a busy old year for the administrators of the Junior Gunners scheme, who will have to be ready with stuffed Gunersauruses for the newly arrived or soon to arrive offspring of Oleksander Zinchenko, Fabio Vieira and Aaron Ramsdale.

Congrats to the new parents and all but we must not let their upcoming long, sleepless nights derail Arsenal’s progress.

Hopefully, they will be taking tips on how to calm a crying baby when 8 o’clock becomes 9 o’clock, then midnight, then 3am. Some try a mistuned radio, or running water or driving around the block (don’t forget the baby).

It can be a delightful but frustrating time.

There is, however, emerging a failsafe solution which works every single time. If you have a tot which won’t sleep, simply prop up a screen by the side of their cot and feed full England international matches into their eyes and ears. However determined the little newts are to ruin your evening, no baby will be able to stay awake for more than a few minutes of this treatment. In fact, praise may be due to any adult able to tiptoe through Gareth Southgate’s elongated reign without dozing off.

Of course, it was particularly difficult this week. First, England looked typically sedated against Ukraine, and then, for a second trial, we had to listen to at least 50 claims that Scotland versus England is never a friendly. Change the word “old” to “auld” and we were supposed to have something really special on hands. In fact, every baby in the land was magically asleep before Phil Foden had opened the scoring after half an hour.

There are apologists for Gareth Southgate who say beating Germany at Wembley in the Euros a few years ago was some supreme achievement; in reality it was 1-0 win against a team on the slide.

His team has not actually beaten any other “superpower” outside of England in a crunch match, and yet his time will be considered a success due to the fortuitous draws through the main tournaments.

In fact, Southgate – best illustrated by his affection for Kalvin Phillps, who nobody knows if he is any good or not because he never plays for Manchester City – has overseen a regime of caution and restraint that has wasted the opportunities presented by a crop of exciting attacking players. The sport is played at a breakneck pace in the Premier League, but rather than playing to this strength Southgate’s paranoia has been destructive.

Of course, he seems like a nice chap but now is the time, similarly to the way Spurs have finally discovered, for a more expansive, goal-hungry manager. Somebody who will build a force of fun around Jude Bellingham. Somebody who will wake the baby up.