Roy’s so happy to be spoilt for choice
ROY Hodgson has the welcome headache of trying to shoehorn England’s best attacking talent into the same side, but bristled at questions about how best to utilise captain Wayne Rooney at Euro 2016.
The Three Lions head to France tomorrow fresh from hard-fought, if not totally convincing, friendly wins against Turkey, Australia and Portugal.
Chris Smalling’s late header secured a 1-0 win against the latter on Thursday but was unable to mask an underwhelming display, when attack rather defence was the area of concern.
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 think that’s a good problem to have, shoehorning in attacking players,” he said.
“For long periods of time, I don’t know that I’ve had that situation where there’s a lot of good attacking players to shoehorn so you won’t find me complaining about that.
“You would find me complaining if we weren’t defending well as a team, conceding lots of goals, chances and every time we played we needed to score three to win a game so I’ve seen no evidence of that.”
England’s first clean sheet of the year was rarely in doubt against a Portugal side reduced to 10 men after Bruno Alves’ ludicrously high 36th-minute challenge on Kane.
It robbed Hodgson of the chance to try to solve the attacking balance, with the likes of Gary Lineker of Alan Shearer quick to criticise as in-form Kane and Vardy played wider of Rooney.
How best to utilise the 30-yearold skipper in France is a key question, especially having impressed in midfield for Manchester United, but Hodgson did not want to focus on England’s alltime top scorer.
“I’ll allow you to write whatever you think about Wayne Rooney, but I’m not prepared to make this the Wayne Rooney show,” he said. “Wayne was one of the players out there.
“Once again we changed our system, as we’ve done on several occasions, we started with two strikers, Rooney in a number 10 position.
“Then we decided when we brought on Sterling in particular and Lallana, we changed Sturridge too, and played a more traditional way if you like.
“Which one works best? Well, you have to be careful there because the three at the end, they were playing against a team which was tiring and furthermore they were playing against a team that had allowed total domination of the ball.”