Analysis: Can Hodgson find England a reliable striker?

For a man whose hobby is collecting expensive watches, timing is obviously not one of Roy Hodgson’s strong points.

He had a good start to 2014 and a great end. But when he needed his team to be good during the important bit in the middle, they were rubbish.

With 2015 less than a month old, the England manager’s timing shows no sign of improvement.

He’d set up an informal dinner at St George’s Park this week backed by skipper Wayne Rooney to review the last performance against Scotland in November, and discuss the European Championship qualifiers ahead.

But the get-together has been scrapped because his players are just too busy.

It’s led to suggestions that the England DNA that the FA have given so much publicity to should stand for Did Not Attend!

As a result, Hodgson will have had no face-to-face contact with his squad for four months when they next assemble ahead of the qualifier against Lithuania in late March.

His team have won six matches on the bounce, and the feelgood factor was beginning to return after an ego-bruising, thoroughly depressing World Cup.

You can’t blame him for being worried that any momentum would grind to a halt as players turn all their attention to club issues.

England is the last thing on their minds at the moment, hence his intended little reminder.

Instead of the dinner, the players are being sent Hodgson’s key points in digital form so they can access the information on their tablets.

At best, they will give it a cursory glance. They’ve all got higher priorities than what happened in a friendly 70-odd days ago.

So effectively the opportunity to reinforce the rebuilding work has been lost.

By the time they play Lithuania, the fact Hodgson finished the year with arguably the best performance of his stewardship will have been forgotten.

This is the mid-point of a very frustrating hiatus for Roy. Having spent Christmas and New Year in Miami, he’s been back at his desk since the first week in January.

His batteries are recharged after a draining 12 months, and he’ll be desperate to immerse himself again.

It’s certain that he’ll touch base with his captain from time to time. But beyond that, he has little to do other than watch matches and try to find players who might be useful to him when international football restarts.

In that respect, these next few weeks could be extremely productive.

As things stand, he has a striker problem. Daniel Sturridge is only just getting fit after missing five months, Rickie Lambert never plays 90 minutes, Danny Welbeck is currently injured and Rooney is playing in midfield.

Fortunately, Hodgson has been presented with half-a-dozen decent options the fit-and-scoring Andy Carroll, the highly-promising Harry Kane, the regular goals of Charlie Austin, plus the development of Under-21 stars Saido Berahino and Danny Ings.

He might even take another look at Jermain Defoe, should he score the goals Sunderland expect him to after his aborted spell at Toronto.

Carroll was Hodgson’s first go-to guy when he got the job. He did nothing wrong, except get injured, and he’s scored headers, tap-ins and wonder strikes since he got back in the West Ham side.

Kane is the flavour of the month. He’s convinced Mauricio Pochettino he’s the best striker at Tottenham and looks both an immediate and long-term England prospect.

Austin has stepped into the Rickie Lambert role as “journeyman striker made good.” Anyone who can score 13 Premier League goals in a team as poor as QPR’s must be worth considering.

Hodgson named Berahino in his last squad but didn’t play him. There have been question marks about his attitude but none about his goals.

Ings is an outsider, but seven Premier League goals for Burnley is the equivalent of double that for some others.

Hodgson elected not to take Defoe to Brazil, preferring to jump on the “Unleash the Young Lions” bandwagon.

Picking a 32-year-old back from the MLS might appear to be going backwards but regular goalscorers of any age are impossible to ignore.

Striker options were so limited before the World Cup that it was Hobson’s Choice.

Now, with 10 to pick from, it’s very much Hodgson’s choice.

So if he achieves nothing else while he’s twiddling his thumbs waiting for the action to re-start, he should at least be able to work out which he fancies.

The man with the passion for precision chronographs has been given time and he needs to use it wisely.