Phil Foden has left enough positive impressions in the formative stages of his career that I hope it will not come across as too po-faced to ask whether this supremely talented footballer – and perhaps some of the people around him – can avoid getting too carried away now he is starting to benefit from the trappings of his industry. That is not meant to sound impertinent but perhaps you saw the photograph of Foden that was circulated via Instagram on his 18th birthday. Can you imagine the fuss if, say, Raheem Sterling had posed for that kind of picture? Where you might ordinarily expect a few candles, Foden’s birthday cake was decorated with iced £50 banknotes. Loads of them, spilling out of a Gucci wallet that was also made of icing sugar, with a level of detail that suggested you wouldn’t find this kind of cake in your local Greggs. It all felt very Floyd Mayweather. And, yes, it’s only a stupid cake. But still, not what you might have expected if you know the unpretentious part of Stockport where Foden grew up. No harm done, ultimately. Foden is young, entitled to make a few mistakes, and it would be pretty miserable to be too hard on him for not understanding, perhaps, that teenage footballers being showy with their wealth is rarely a good look. Most of us, after all, were still trying to master a three-point turn at that age, never mind dealing with the swift advances of fame. Plus there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to demonstrate why Pep Guardiola and the players at Manchester City all speak about the youngest ever owner of a Premier League winner’s medal with such affection. The story, for example, of him politely declining an invitation to join his teammates in the pub on the evening last season’s title was confirmed, on the basis he had already promised to go night fishing with his dad. Or the open-top bus parade when the players were given carte blanche to drink what they wanted. Some of them very clearly made the most of that opportunity. Foden, meanwhile, could be seen sipping a strange, purple concoction through a cocktail straw. Vimto, it turned out. It is coming up for a year now since Foden’s performances in the Under‑17 World Cup earned him the Golden Ball for the outstanding player of the tournament and the only disappointment since then is that it is difficult, really difficult, for a player his age to establish a regular place in a team with City’s ambitions. Foden’s performance against Oxford in the Carabao Cup in midweek, albeit facing lower‑division opponents, was a reminder of his uncommon talents. On Saturday, however, it was back to the norm, starting on the bench for the 2-0 win against Brighton and restricted to the role of an 88th-minute substitute. Foden’s three substitute appearances in the league this season amount to 31 minutes. He has never started a top-division fixture and even when City had won the league last season, he was restricted to a couple of brief cameos, totalling 27 minutes, in the following five games. All of which can hardly be ideal for Gareth Southgate if you recall his comments about travelling to City’s game against Huddersfield in August because he felt sure Foden would start. Southgate learned that day it was not easy trying to second-guess Guardiola and Foden’s only involvement came as an 82nd-minute substitute. It was his first appearance of the season and the reports of him winning his first England call-up, for the games against Spain and Switzerland, turned out to be premature even if – such is the life of the modern‑day England manager – Southgate’s logic for leaving him out was skewed somewhat by the presence of Fabian Delph, another City player, who had not played a single minute for his club. Southgate will announce his latest squad on Thursday for the Nations League ties in Croatia and Spain and, if he is willing to make concessions for other players, perhaps this time he will conclude there is no point keeping Foden back any longer. After all, if the criterion for a Foden call-up is that he has to be playing every week for City we might be in for a heck of a wait. The truth, awkward as it might be, is that Guardiola has much more talented players than Southgate from which to choose. So, why, from an England perspective, hold Foden back? If Southgate is using these games to prepare for the major tournaments, why not integrate Foden now with Euro 2020 in mind? Foden’s chances must surely have been advanced because of Dele Alli’s enforced absence, at a time when Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Adam Lallana have also been missing games through injury. Even if not, however, I would also argue it is too early to start fretting that Foden’s career is not moving upwards at the rate many people, Southgate included, would have liked. Southgate should be far more concerned, for example, about the predicament of Dominic Solanke, who has not even made it as far as the substitutes’ bench for Liverpool’s opening seven league games. Southgate regards Solanke as a striker who could flourish in the England setup for many years. Not, however, if the player is forever on the outside, looking in, at Anfield. Solanke was named among Liverpool’s substitutes for the Carabao Cup tie against Chelsea but that was far as he got and Jürgen Klopp’s side are now out of the competition, meaning even less opportunities. Having recently turned 21 Solanke is three years older than Foden and there are so many players ahead of him at Anfield it is perplexing his club did not arrange a loan move before the season. That will surely be put right in the January window. Would Foden contemplate the same? It is pointless arguing that one too much because the bottom line is Guardiola has already decided the teenager will benefit more from training with City’s elite performers than playing regularly elsewhere. Foden, in turn, gives the impression it would need a crowbar to lever him out of City, even temporarily, but it is still an interesting and legitimate debate. Consider how Jadon Sancho has flourished after moving to Borussia Dortmund or the way the Dutchman Javairo Dilrosun, another of Foden’s former academy team-mates, has gone straight into Hertha Berlin’s starting lineup since leaving City in the summer. It is never easy quibbling with Guardiola’s decision‑making but, in this case, a reasonable argument could be made that Foden would benefit from 90-minute performances, twice a week, with a carefully selected team, to return at a later date. As it is, Kevin De Bruyne’s impending return from injury will lessen Foden’s first-team chances again and there is a common theme if you look at the team from the Under‑17 World Cup final and consider there is only one other player, Morgan Gibbs‑White at Wolves, who has managed a single minute in the Premier League this season or, in the case of Jonathan Panzo, Ligue 1 with Monaco. It is a problem for everyone but Foden, Guardiola might argue, is actually not doing badly on that front. It is just that English football is understandably impatient for more. Everyone is always in a hurry when it is a special player and that, presumably, also encompasses the manager of the national team. Southgate can at least do something about it. Lawton a master of our trade who lived life to the full The truth is that it was always slightly disconcerting back in the days when we had to dial our copy through those old Rotary-style phones and, across the press box, you could hear James Lawton reeling off the most beautifully chiselled prose, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Make it sing,” an old sports editor used to tell me. Nobody, however, could produce such lyrical words as the man representing the Independent or, before then, the Daily Express, in the years when it was selling almost four million copies a day and a very different beast to what we have now. Jim, as his friends knew him, could turn around reams of wonderfully elegant copy in the time many of us, without exaggeration, would still be wrestling with our intros. The eulogies since his death reflect his standing as a colossus of the industry and I would say the actor James Nesbitt probably had it right when he was asked on Desert Island Discs a few years ago which book, alongside The Complete Works of Shakespeare and The Bible, he would like for company. “The collected writings of James Lawton,” Nesbitt replied. It was true that Jim’s turn of phrase and often trenchant views could enhance even the greatest of sporting spectacles, but it was the speed at which he delivered these masterpieces that made it even more breathtaking to his fellow scribblers. He could also turn his hand to the most exquisitely delivered put-downs I ever read and, boy, he certainly had some fun chopping down to size the pompous, the pretentious and anybody else whose ego he had decided, with his acute sense of right and wrong, needed to be punctured. Quite often, he would do it on the hoof, dictating his copy from the back of a taxi flying over the cobbles of some foreign city, or back at the hotel bar, where he would always request your company and, more often than not, had already inquired of reception whether he could settle in advance the fine for smoking in his room. Jim certainly lived life to the full and that made him a great companion on the road, with his stories about Malcolm Allison, the nights with George Best, the boxing events that seemed to bring the entire planet to a standstill and more memories than it was fair for one man to possess. The story about Viv Richards marching up the steps of the press box and threatening to punch his lights out, during a Test in Antigua, is the famous one. But there were countless others, all told with that nicotine-laced chuckle. The industry is different now and it is a sad truth that the modern generation of writers – many, like myself, who will always be grateful for the way Jim treated the younger members of his profession – will never have a fraction of the access that was afforded to their predecessors. Jim was a throwback to an era when the headline-writers were friends and confidantes of the headline-makers. It was an altogether better era and, in all the tributes, I was reminded of a line he reserved for Muhammad Ali’s obituary. Ali was always one of the people who held Jim’s fascination. “He was, after all, a miracle of his species,” he wrote. In our daft world, so were you, Jim, so were you. The Guardian Sport