I have never been injury-prone… but sometimes I have been a bit naive, says Manchester United defender Phil Jones

IN a week when seven England players had pulled out of Gareth Southgate’s squad with injuries, it was briefly a source of some irony that Phil Jones wasn’t one of them.

Then, of course, the inevitable happened.

25 minutes into Friday’s friendly international against Germany, Jones limped off with a thigh strain.

The Manchester United centre-back has developed an unwanted reputation for picking up knocks, pulls and strains over the years, and in many ways this one was typical.

He was hurt making a desperate goal-line headed clearance to prevent Leroy Sane putting the visitors one up.

The incident summed up what Jones is all about – always willing to put his body on the line for his team but often paying a high price for his commitment.

Since arriving at Old Trafford from Blackburn for £16.1m in 2011, Jones has been sidelined over 30 times, missing almost 650 days and around 120 games.

He was sent back to his club for treatment before England’s last two qualifiers in October.

But as Southgate’s squad was decimated by call-offs ahead of these friendlies, Jones was determined he wasn’t going to be one of them.

The 25-year-old was focused on adding to his modest total of 23 caps over six years, and cementing his place in the manager’s mind ahead of the World Cup Finals.

Despite another setback, Jones insists the “injury-prone” tag that has followed him around since he moved to Old Trafford is both unfair and inaccurate.

“No, I don’t consider myself to be injury-prone,” he says. “I could give you a list of 20, 30, 40 players in the Premier League who’ve had far more injuries than me.

“But nobody talks about them nearly as much as they talk about me. Maybe it’s just because I play for Man. United!”

Jones has often been described as “too brave for his own good” when it comes to making risky challenges.

That is typified by a much-watched clip from a United-Arsenal game a couple of years ago in which he crawled along the ground to head the ball away from the feet of Olivier Giroud.

“I got underneath the ball and had to stop him scoring,” Jones laughs. “That’s what you’ve got to do as a defender.

“I wasn’t trying to be a hero, but sometimes you have to put your body on the line and put your head where it hurts.”

Just as there are stats to highlight the matches he’s missed, there are also those to back up Jones’ assertion that his injury record is nothing exceptional.

In only one of his six full seasons at United has he played fewer than 24 matches, and he’s had to battle for game time with centre-backs like Chris Smalling, Marcos Rojo, Eric Bailly, Daley Blind and Victor Lindelof, as well as his injuries.

Though the problem he picked up at Wembley on Friday wasn’t caused by physical contact with another player, Jones does accept that perhaps his enthusiasm got the better of him on occasion when he was younger.

“I don’t think the injuries happened because I was rash,” says the 25-year-old. “I would call it being naive.

“Reining it in a bit just comes with experience and knowing your body.

“Maybe I do step away from challenges now where I would have just gone flying into them in the past.

“Mind you, my missus might not say I’m too brave for my own good! She’s always saying I’m clumsy around the house.”

Southgate will get over Jones’s absence for a friendly but it would be a different matter if the player was unavailable for the World Cup or injured during the tournament.

At the start of the season, he identified Jones as England’s best defender – “Not just now but for a large part of last season too,” said the manager.

“I’ve definitely never thought of myself in that way,” Jones says.

“There are a lot of talented players in our squad, not just in my position but all over the pitch, and everyone is fighting for a position.

“It’s up to us to show him we are capable of starting the game. Ultimately, whoever he picks will go out and do the job.”

Southgate’s praise was mild, however, when compared to some of the hyperbole surrounding Jones in his early days at United.

It doesn’t exactly relieve the pressure on a youngster when Sir Bobby Charlton compares you to Duncan Edwards, and Sir Alex Ferguson predicts you’re going to be the club’s greatest-ever player!

“As daft as it sounds, you don’t really take too much notice,” Jones counters.

“But it’s always nice to hear comments like that coming from people of that calibre.

“The United fans must have thought: ‘‘We’re getting some player here’. Then they realised what they had!

“But it wasn’t really any extra pressure. If you are getting praise, that’s great. But I try not to take it to heart.

“It‘s the same as getting criticised. You can’t be up there one minute and down the next.

“I just try to focus on me and not what’s going on around me.”

Ferguson always said he signed Jones because of the competitiveness he showed in a Blackburn Rovers side that was being beaten 7-1 by his United team.

“I hate losing, whether I’m playing football, pool or anything,” says Jones. “Who likes losing?

“I was born to win and if I don’t win, I’m a frustrated person.

“I put 100% into every game, and I’m never going to come off the pitch saying: ‘I played brilliantly today’.

“We’re not robots. You know you’re going to have games where you’re not as good as in others, so I’m never going to pat myself on the back.

“As a defender, I see myself as an all-rounder. I don’t see myself as either old-school or as a pretty player on the ball.

“John Terry was always the one I loved to watch. People would say he’s an old-school type of player. But when you actually watch him on the ball, he’s terrific. I wish I had his range of passing.

“I can be physical, when you have to roll your socks up, scrap for balls and get into tussles.

“But I also feel that I can play out from the back. I think everyone who has been in the England squad can do that.”

Jones has played just 90 minutes of tournament football – the dead rubber against Costa Rica at the last World Cup – having missed out on Euro 2016 and not got on the field during Euro 2012.

“Costa Rica was a difficult game because of the circumstances,” he says. “The knives were out before the game, but it’s one I remember fondly because I could say that I’d played at a World Cup.

“I’m looking forward to the next one. I hope I’m there, but there are no guarantees because the manager has to make tough decisions.

“I don’t see myself playing in any position other than centre-back. I can do a job at right-back or maybe defensive midfield, but people definitely see me as a centre-back now and that’s always what I said I would be.”

Like the rest of Southgate’s current squad, Jones is aware that some of the public has fallen out of love with international football, and he confirms that it’s a priority among this set of players to do something about it.

“If that’s happened, it’s up to us to earn it back,” he says. “Every single one of the lads wants that.”