when it’s obvious to everyone else.
The fact that Roy Hodgson is still dithering over which striker to take to Euro 2016 shows that the biggest factor in any England failure this summer will be Roy. Can we drop him from the 23?
One player scores after 2 minutes 8 seconds of his international debut the other can’t make it through a training session without pulling up injured and hasn’t featured for England for a couple of years.
To most it wouldn’t take long to figure out but Roy is swithering and dithering but then even after this latest pre-tournament friendly Roy is probably still pencilling Wilshere in for the defensive midfielder role. Oh and he’ll be more than happy with Henderson and Sterling.
Oh, Sterling assisted for Rashford’s goal. I read someone say “brilliantly”. A cross that was never going to get past the defender was lucky to get close to the youngster after ballooning up in the air. He spent the rest of the game, bar a couple of passes, dithering in such a manner that it’s obvious why Roy loves ‘im.
Townsend came on late and was direct. Now I’m no great Andros fan, well Andros being Andros but here he wasn’t doing his usual routine. No he was straight towards the byline and getting decent balls into the danger area. No cutting in and hitting aimless shots wide of the target. Direct running, unlike Sterling who always has to stop and try and beat a player who he’s let catch up by stopping in the first place.
Then Henderson who again I read had a great game. Don’t know what constitutes great these days. Henderson was mainly in a competition with Smalling to see who could gift away possession the most. Henderson got away with it more as the balls he over-hit were generally in the opposition half. While Smalling gifted the Aussies the ball around his own area, that’s if his inept headers actually got out of England’s box.
Deer in the headlights doesn’t even cut it for Smalling who carried on his defensive master-class from the cup final. Bertrand initially and then Stones, who showed a lot more promise than the previous game, indeed than the season gone, got Roy’s number one choice out of trouble numerous times, as the game panned out as it did against Turkey.
A promising start with an excellent early goal, well taken by Rashford, who you had to feel sorry for being surrounded by the lesser players, along with being shoved out wide. Especially when Rooney came on, a great chance to put the kid up front and try Rooney wider as the latter shouldn’t be the focal point of attack. What was the point Roy, you’ve played Rooney in nearly every game of you tenure what did this tell you that you didn’t know before?
Things then followed the same course as the Aussies dominated as Turkey did. Yup, Wilshere as the holding midfielder worked a real treat as they ran past him like he wasn’t there. Drinkwater did very little to make put himself forward but at least it’s his position. Ah but the mouth open tongue out merchant did it in qualification against all those top teams.
Struggle against the Aussies and what will the class of Europe do to you and that defence needs all the help it can get.
So Rashford scores and Sturridge slumps behind his hood and gets the phone out. Most would be searching for flights out of the country but not French bound. But Roy still upset from having to dump Delph can’t bring himself to pull the trigger on the other lame ducks.
England have two habits going into tournaments. One good one bad. Roy seems more wanting to go the bad route of picking out of form and unfit players, following in the footsteps of Robson with Robson, Sven with Beckham, Fabio with Rooney etc etc. While not going the good route of picking a kid who has just come out of no where, with Marcus Rashford.