Wednesday, 20 November 2013

ROY HOGDSON: THE TEAM LACKED QUALITY

Hodgson admitted England lacked
quality after seeing his side booed off the Wembley pitch for the second time in five days after slumping to two successive home defeats for the first  time in 36 years

Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker scored the only goal of the game for Germany with a powerful header in the first half to consign England to a 1-0 defeat following
the 2-0 loss to Chile on Friday.

If England goalkeeper Joe Hart had not pulled off a string of saves, including one double save in the first half, then England's defeat could have been even more demoralising.

Hodgson said: "I'm disappointed, it's not nice to lose, especially a second game at home. One can't be in any way satisfied. I'm not disappointed with the effort the
players put in, the work rate and their application.

"I don't think there were stages of the game where we were being particularly outplayed and in long periods it was an even game.
"But where the Germans were clearly better than us was in their passing and in their finishing around the final third. We let ourselves down in that area.

"The major disappointment is two-fold: we didn't show the quality I was hoping we would show, and the other disappointment is having 150,000 people through to watch us and sending them home disappointed."

The boos rang out at the final whistle after a performance in which England failed to fire a single shot on target, although Tottenham's Andros Townsend
did hit the post with a left-foot strike in the second half.

Hodgson said: "It's always disappointing to get boos, but there aren't many games where the home side don't get the result
and then don't boo.
"We don't want that. We want the
applause we had after the Montenegro and Poland games.
"But to get the applause, that level of acclaim, we're going to have to play better and win matches. We didn't play well enough tonight, didn't win, and sent 85,000 people home disappointed."

England captain Steven Gerrard, who missed last week's training, was substituted after 55 minutes after "stiffening up" and Ashley Cole also came off with a recurrence of a rib injury.

Hodgson was prickly when it was
suggested the German team was a
second-string line-up missing half a dozen first-team regulars.
Hodgson said: "We don't know that. We'll see how many of those players play in the German team come Brazil. They have a strong squad. Five of those who started
play for Borussia Dortmund.

"It would be unfair to suggest that was a weak German team. I thought the teams were equally matched. They had players
missing and we had players missing. I learned a lot from the game."
Asked whether Hart, who has been
dropped in recent weeks by Manchester City, would take confidence from a strong
performance Hodgson said: "I'd like to think so. He played very well and wasn't snowed under with work. We shaded it territorially, but they created more chances."

Hodgson, who also revealed
Southampton's Adam Lallana had done well enough in the two games to put himself in a strong position to go to Brazil, was also tetchy when it was suggested England could have a problem
in central defence.

He said: "Gary Cahill was rested tonight. If you look at what we've done in the qualifiers, Gary Cahill and Phil Jagielka have played in the qualifiers and Chris Smalling did well. We knew [corners
would] be a major problem for us given the big guys in their team and we weren't at our tallest."
On Lallana, he said: "Very good. He's beena major find."

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