Some had called it long ago.<\/p>\n
In fact, such was Anderson’s promise, one or two of his former teachers at Valley Gardens Middle School even considered placing a bet on him playing for England one day.<\/p>\n
Anderson always had talent – a former team-mate still has his number saved as ‘wonderkid’ in his contacts – but he has gone on to quietly prove he can do both sides of the game at Forest.<\/p>\n
On the ball, Anderson has made more line-breaking passes than any other midfielder so far in the Premier League this season (32), including a superb assist for Chris Wood in his side’s opening day win against Brentford.<\/p>\n
Out of possession, meanwhile, Anderson ranked second for duels won (242), third for possession won (207) and fifth for tackles (92) among players in his position in the top-flight last year.<\/p>\n
No wonder Tuchel hailed Anderson as a “good package” after he helped England under-21s retain their European title a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n
Anderson, who featured in every game, was named in the team of the tournament at the Euros and under-21s manager Lee Carsley “really enjoyed working with him”.<\/p>\n
“He’s very committed to his preparation and doing well,” Carsley said. “I know how desperate he is to play for England. <\/p>\n
“He made that really clear in all the conversations that we had. We constantly spoke about putting him in a position where he was selectable and he’s done that with his determination, commitment and confidence.<\/p>\n
“He’s got so many attributes. He’s physically very good, technically he’s excellent but, more importantly, his mentality to be a top player is what has put him in this position and he should be really proud of what he’s doing.”<\/p>\n
It could have been very different, of course.<\/p>\n
Anderson, who has a Scottish grandmother, previously represented the Tartan Army through the age groups and was even handed a senior call-up in 2023.<\/p>\n
But Ben Dawson, who was Newcastle’s first-team development coach at the time, also recalled how determined Anderson was to play for the Three Lions.<\/p>\n
“I remember having discussions with Elliot, saying Scotland could be a great opportunity to play European Championship games and World Cup qualifiers, but he was adamant that he would play for England,” Dawson said.<\/p>\n
“I told him recently that I was really pleased he backed himself and stood by his decision to prove that he was good enough because, at the time, I was of the opinion that it was a big call and he could potentially miss out on an international career, but he’s always backed himself to be good enough at the top level.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some had called it long ago. In fact, such was Anderson’s promise, one or two of his former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-116186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}