England’s all-time leading goalscorer Wayne Rooney will continue to captain the side under new manager Sam Allardyce.
Advertisement
Rooney is expected to speak to the media on Tuesday at St George’s Park ahead of this weekend’s match in Trnava, which will kick-off England’s qualification campaign for the 2018 World Cup in Russian Federation. For him it’s disappointing, the door is always open for Ross but at this moment I felt the squad I picked is right.
The player most affected by that positional tweak is Ross Barkley, who was dropped by Allardyce in his first squad announcement since becoming coach.
Sam Allardyce begins his reign as England manager against Slovakia in Trnava on Sunday, and Roy Hodgson’s successor has had his say on players, the Olympics, recruiting foreign stars and other key issues.
And that’s why he’s likely to call up Everton’s 34-year-old skipper Phil Jagielka for the Slovakia trip.
The former England captain, who won 78 caps between 2002-2012, turned down the chance of a potential return, saying his days at the England team national team are over.
“We’ve looked at all avenues, what sort of pre-season they’ve had, what happened last season, this season, looked at [the] balance of the squad”.
“It was an easy decision”, said Allardyce. Having been a captain myself, if you thrive on that responsibility and earn respect from players then the captain makes lot of decisions on field that you as manager can’t get on the pitch and do.
And that has been echoed by Rooney, the man who has been in possession of the England captaincy.
Ross Barkley was also an eye-catching absentee, but while he did everything possible to press his case – scoring twice in four appearances for Everton this season – Wilshere’s problem is lack of game time.
“Ross is a hard one because he has been playing quite well since the start of the season and the change of position for Wayne made it a little hard to pick Ross”, said the former Sunderland manager.
“They’re a team that has to come out and attack us to try and win the game”.
We haven’t got a huge squad and injuries can happen at any time so with someone of his quality it makes sense to keep him.
“Jack just hasn’t had enough game time”.
The 26-year-old has adjusted well to life in the Premier League since joining the Hammers from Nottingham Forest a year ago.
Speaking on Monday morning, Allardyce said: “The journey and quality [Antonio’s] given in every league he’s played in”.
The whole debate of whether England should claim “foreign” players as their own has been reopened after the Football Association responded to overtures from the father of Steven N’Zonzi.
Advertisement
“Maybe sometimes we have to dig one out here and there – let’s be resilient and tough”.
