England coach Roy Hodgson says he has no doubts about Manchester United ace Wayne Rooney.
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The Three Lions head to France on Monday fresh from hard-fought, if not totally convincing, friendly wins against Turkey, Australia and Portugal.
Hodgson was unable to effectively find a way to get the triumvirate of Rooney, Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy into the same line-up but working out how best to embrace England’s abundance of attacking talent is a welcome issue.
“I know what Dier means but I think a lot of English players are known not to go down as easy as (players from) other countries”, Kane said.
It was as if Hodgson was trying to field his best players without thinking about a system to accommodate them all.
The visitors had Bruno Alves sent off in the first half for a high boot on Harry Kane and despite the man advantage Hodgson’s men appeared to struggle to break down the Portuguese. Dele Alli is a real talent in midfield, and England also have some excellent attacking full backs who are not afraid to go forward.
“I’m not prepared to accept that we didn’t play well”, Hodgson was quoted as saying by the Independent.
One would think that all 23 players in Roy Hodgson’s squad are nervous that the European Championship is set to begin on June 10th, with the Three Lions match taking place the next day against Russian Federation.
“That is probably the experience and the advice that the management will probably be giving the defence – cut out the individual areas, make sure you concentrate because you’ll get punished at this level”. Or what’s the point?
“Then we decided when we brought on [Raheem] Sterling in particular and [Adam] Lallana, we changed [Daniel] Sturridge too and played a more traditional way if you like, if you think the way we’ve played over the last couple of years with Sterling on one side, Lallana on the other, Sturridge down the middle”.
@WayneRooney gets on the end of a low centre only to be denied by an excellent save.
“You would find me complaining if we weren’t defending as a team, conceding lots of goals and chances, and every time we played we needed to score three to win a game”.
England have been drawn in Group B alongside Russia, Wales and Slovakia in the 24-team tournament.
Waddle, who made 62 appearances for England, thinks that Roy Hodgson doesn’t know his best starting 11 ahead of England’s opening fixture of Euro 2016 against Russian Federation.
“Whether it’s players telling each things or the manager, there’s never any arguments and everybody is trying to learn and improve”.
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Rooney added: “The first tournament is always hard and you have to learn while you are there”. You saw against Portugal on Thursday night what one good cross can do to the opposition when Raheem Sterling dinked one for Chris Smalling to head England’s late victor at Wembley.
