He was deployed in a deep midfield role on Sunday evening in a 4-1-4-1 formation, revealing afterwards that the position “suits me”.
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Despite Slovakia being down to 10 men for the majority of the second half, England couldn’t break their defence until worryingly close to the whistle.
Put global experience to the side, the former West Ham United and Bolton Wanderers boss is the England manager, and he tells players where they should play and must take players out who are harming the team in general. At this point, he is only disrupted the positioning of his own teammates, Eric Dier and Jordan Henderson.
“Wayne is a fantastic player”.
Granted, England do not have an N’Golo Kanté to effect major positive change in midfield, but they do have promising youngster Adam Lallana and above-reproach Wayne Rooney and out-tactic-ing master Sam Allardyce, so what could possibly go wrong?
Sam Allardyce’s men, who were initially joint favourites with Slovakia to top Group F, are now clearly ahead in the eyes of the bookmakers.
Durica nevertheless feels that the sending off was part of a controversy to ensure England qualify from their group.
“A father of a son in a wheelchair came to the hotel this morning and asked if it was okay to have a picture with his son”, Allardyce said.
Allardyce declared himself happy with Rooney’s performance but curiously suggested that he had deferred to his skipper over where he played and even expressed surprise at how far he dropped. “We got what we deserved”, he said.
“I am using his experience to its maximum and encouraging him to play very well, which I thought he did”. “I can’t stop Wayne playing there”, he said.
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“With a new manager coming in you want to get him a good victory to start off with, he has been great all week”. Allardyce will know this better than anyone and not until Russian Federation 2018 will anyone be truly able to tell – unless England’s pattern of play changes radically and they turn into a team of incisiveness and beauty – whether he can inspire his team to greater things than Hodgson and a raft of other managers who came before.
