JORDAN WILL MAKE IMPACT FROM BENCH

I CAN understand the clamour to bring in Jordan Henderson to face the Italians.

Why would you not consider it when you are up against players in that Italy midfield like Marco Verratti, Jorginho and Nicolo Barella.

Here’s the thing. I’ve had a long injury lay-off, just like Jordan, and when you’ve been out for that length of time you simply cannot come back into a big game against top players and expect to match them physically.

Let’s not forget, Jordan (above) has been out for five months. Gareth Southgate is nursing him back gradually and that has to continue, for country and for club.

Cast your mind back to the Germany game where Kalvin Phillips and Declan Rice worked tirelessly to close down Toni Kroos and Leon Goretzka, making sure they couldn’t get their heads up and dictate. Jordan is not yet at a level physically where he can maintain that.

He will be though. We are talking about a Premier League winner, a Champions League winner and a Champions League finalist 12 months before that. We know how outstanding he is at full tilt, but he just isn’t there yet. He’ll make an impact from the bench.

Phillips and Rice will need that same energy to prevent Jorginho and Verratti enjoying the time and space to make the kind of passes that establish an Italian dominance in midfield.

Just a word on Rice and Phillips too. Declan has definitely not surprised me because I’ve seen him do it first hand, having played against him in the Premier League, for a couple of years now.

Phillips has really impressed me. He was in the Championship a year ago, but I saw him in the first game against Croatia and within the first five minutes I knew he could live at this level.

In the first two minutes he snapped into a tackle that had the crowd cheering and it set the tempo for the game.

We thought he’d be mostly defensive but he was making runs in behind and it seemed at times as though we had an extra player supporting Kane because of how well Kalvin got up to support.

The game will be won or lost in midfield. We need to make sure we have the legs in there to be the ones to come out on top.