Roy Hodgson needs Wednesday’s game against Scotland about as much as David Moyes, Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger.
For the Premier League managers, a friendly international played three days before the season opens is an inconvenience at best an injury nightmare waiting to happen at worst.
For Hodgson, though, the revival of the Auld Enemies fixture to help celebrate the FA’s 150th anniversary is like a chocolate teapot. Its usefulness is somewhat limited!
Given Scotland’s ever-diminishing status as a European footballing nation, it’s a fixture England are expected to win comfortably.
The problem with that theory is that the Scots’ domestic programme has been in full swing while England’s players have been selling shirts and TV rights on behalf of their clubs in various far-flung corners of the world.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xo1mvE-ou7g%3Frel%3D0
Scotland’s players will be salivating over this game. Their fans will stoke up nationalist fervour. It’s the chance to right all the wrongs of history.
Hodgson, on the other hand, will just be happy to get through the fixture, see the gate receipts safely in the FA’s bank account and hope to escape the wrath of an irate club manager fuming about his star getting injured.
A number of his players Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, Jack Wilshere and Jermain Defoe have already spent more time injured than training this pre-season.
It’s testament to the shallowness of the pool from which he selects that Hodgson has had to name players who are miles from match readiness.
Up front, for instance, with Andy Carroll and Daniel Sturridge even less fit than Rooney and Defoe, he’s had to call up 31-year-old Rickie Lambert to supplement Danny Welbeck.
Welbeck has effectively become first-choice, even though 31 defenders scored more Premier League goals than he did last season.
England’s bid to reach the World Cup Finals is teetering on the brink. The big-name transfer sagas dominating the back pages this summer have masked the most important story of all.
Hodgson needs to win his two September fixtures to breathe a little easier. Any dropped points will pile on the pressure in the final two Wembley matches against Montenegro and Poland a month later.
But the idea that this is an opportunity to hone his team ahead of the qualifiers against Moldova and Ukraine next month is frankly ludicrous. The most he might get out of it is a performance from Lambert that will mark him down as an alternative to Carroll.
Beyond that, Hodgson will learn nothing.
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