kid.
After a man of the match performance against France for England to follow up the one against Woolwich, Dele Alli will have Daniel Levy hearing cash register noises.
It also gives Roy Hodgson the type of headache he was trying to avoid.
You the one the media types would like you to believe the England manager enjoys, having a greater pool of players to pick from. Roy doesn’t want that. Roy wants his old faithfuls, his usual suspects. He doesn’t want to have to choose between them and some new kid.
Hell if Hodgson had his way the midfield that lined up against France at Wembley would have been Lampard and Gerrard not a 19 year old, Alli, and a 21 year old, Dier. Christ these two are behind Wilshere, Henderson and Delph in Roy’s thinking. Delph, this generations Carlton Palmer. Wilshere run forward lose the ball fall over stand there with tongue out, get injured and Henderson, mouth breathing bandy legged berk.
Was unhappy that Spurs missed out on Schneiderlin, now not so. The way Alli went through him, before scoring his screamer encapsulated everything about the kid. He’s not afraid and he doesn’t stand on ceremony, straight after winning the ball he wanted it straight back as he moved forward. And moving forward is his asset, to many midfielders are too happy to just fanny about outside the box, very few get in there and create targets while occupying defenders who would otherwise gang up on the strikers.
He also started off the second goal, taking the ball off Pogba, with relative ease, then playing a brilliant pass to Sterling, who amazingly didn’t dither enough to lose possession but found Rooney with a cross, which amazingly Rooney managed to score from, not balloon over the bar or slice wide.
And with Alli and Dier in front of a better back four, just the left-back that needs changing out of that lot, Bertrand in, the whole side looked far better than they did against Spain. Yes I know Spain are a different team to France and events in France last Friday changed things again but they were just more sound and secure.
A back four that was yet again playing in front of Joe Hart. Another classic piece of Roy here. Hart has over 50 caps for England, you’d think Roy would have an idea of his capabilities but no over the international break of the 180 minutes played Hart played 135 of them. Butland finally getting a run out for the second half against France. Why didn’t he at least start this game, hell he should have played both, with the third choice getting that 45 minute chance. But no Roy needed to see Hart just one more time to be sure.
So England actually beat a team of reasonable quality. France aren’t exactly the team of old and well those Friday events can’t have failed to alter things somewhat.
Alli is apparently getting an improved deal at Spurs but at least we know that after this performance Alli won’t turn into another Andros Townsend, who has basically blown it after a fast start to his international career.