“I knew there were 20 minutes left [when I hit the post], we had fresh legs on the pitch, it was tough conditions, it was warm and I thought we were very patient. And if you are that’s great”.
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The 22-year-old, a part of the much-maligned squad in France this summer, played the full 90 minutes as Allardyce’s side began their World Cup qualifying campaign with a narrow victory in Trnava, courtesy of Adam Lallana’s last-minute victor.
Late drama in Romania saw Stevan Jovetic’s 87th-minute header cancel out Adrian Popa’s goal for the hosts just two minutes previously, before Nicolae Stanciu put a penalty over the crossbar in the seventh minute of injury time.
Slovakia’s Martin Skrtel, right, speaks with England’s Wayne Rooney, second right. They did no such thing, barely breaking out beyond a 5-4-1 formation and, forced to make the running, England’s passing was often listless.
GROUP E: Christian Eriksen scored for Denmark to begin World Cup qualifying with a 1-0 win over Armenia, while Poland squandered a two-goal lead in a 2-2 draw with Kazakhstan.
Eric Dier was pleased to start life under Sam Allardyce with a win but said there was still plenty of work to do to heal the scars of a summer of hurt at the European Championship. We were plugging away that much that I always felt we were going to create chance always felt we were going to create chances.
Stones believes the euphoria of a late victor after the disappointment of the European Championship will also begin to breed a good mentality at the start of the Allardyce era.
“He has a lot more experience eat global football than me and an worldwide manager … it’s not for me to say where he will play”.
“It (was) hard to break them down. I am happy where I’m playing”.
But that didn’t wash with Sutton, who wrote in his Daily Mail column: “The England manager needs to get a grip on his captain and tell him to play higher up the field. The result did us justice in the end”.
“We got what we deserved in the end, and won it in the last minute”.
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Sam Allardyce got off to a winning start as England manager, but his post-match comments have angered a good section of the Three Lions’ support.
