Why England can be hopeful for Euro 2016

Roy Hodgson’s side qualified for next summer’s European Championship with a perfect record but can they at last carry their qualifying form into a tournament? GLENN MOORE sees a squad with youthful promise that needs luck with injuries

The preamble is over, with the job done to perfection; now the hard part starts. With the exception of 2008, when Steve McClaren’s stumbling team condemned the managerial brolly to history, England have become adept at negotiating qualifying programmes these last two decades. Taking that form into tournaments has been the problem.

The European Championship in France next summer represents an opportunity for England to go beyond the glass ceiling of the quarter-final stage, but only if everything falls into place on and off the field, and they have the good fortune any successful team requires.

The luck most desired by Roy Hodgson is a clean bill of health for his players. Injuries have beset this qualifying campaign, leading the manager to select 33 players in 10 matches – and his World Cup centre-forward, Daniel Sturridge, did not feature at all. Already the prospects of Luke Shaw, newly established at left-back, being fit for France are receding and he is unlikely to be the only absentee.

Too many of Hodgson’s key players are injury-prone, notably Sturridge, Jack Wilshere and his understudy Michael Carrick, Danny Welbeck, Jordan Henderson and Theo Walcott. Others are simply injured. Nine players were ruled out of this last set of qualifiers, including six of the XI that started the most impressive of the 10 qualifying victories, the win in Switzerland, most of whom Hodgson hopes will form the front half of his tournament team.

During qualifying Hodgson used five right-backs, four left-backs, four holding midfielders and a platoon of attacking players. “No sooner do we find a group of players in a certain area we think are perfect for the job than we lose them all and we have to start again with different ones,” said the manager wearily. This was most evident with the midfield trio of Wilshere, Henderson and Fabian Delph, who formed the core of the side for the first six ties, but have barely figured in this season’s four.

The one advantage to this is Hodgson has been able to have a decent look at virtually every international contender. Now he can use the forthcoming set of demanding friendlies (Spain and France next month, Germany and the Netherlands in the spring) to sift his squad. If injuries permit.

The November matches, said Hodgson, “might give us a few more lessons, a few more indications of what people can and cannot do. That might help us make certain we pick the right team when we do get a bit close to the tournament.” He added: “I think the March friendlies will be more important than the November ones, not least because we might have a few players back and the team might look a bit more like the team I would perhaps have in my head.”

The team in Hodgson’s head includes Sturridge and Wilshere, Henderson and Wayne Rooney, either Shaw or Leighton Baines and possibly John Stones, all currently injured. Increasingly, it may also include Ross Barkley, though that may depend on the opposition.

The Everton midfielder has been the main beneficiary of these last two qualifiers – though Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy and Adam Lallana also gained credit. Of his progress, Hodgson said: “I think it is all down to the fact that he plays every game [for Everton], he is starting to feel his place on the teamsheet is more guaranteed. He realises how much faith his team-mates, his manager, everyone at the club has in him and, of course, he has worked hard at his game.

“He has taken on board all of the advice he is given from his manager and coaching staff, and when he comes to England the work we try to do with him. He is aligning that coaching advice to his enormous talent and we are seeing the benefit. He is not always going to score spectacular goals and dribble past people as if they are not there, and against better opposition he will find that harder as well, but I think he is balancing his decision making in a way that we think is very, very good.”

Ross will play if I feel he is deserving of a place in our best team

&#13; <p>England boss Roy Hodgson</p>&#13;

Barkley, though, will need to maintain that form at Everton if he is to play in Alicante next month. “He will play if I feel he is deserving of a place in what I consider to be our best team, because I will be picking teams to play against Spain and France that I consider to be the best XI of the moment. There’s a lot of [club] football between now and then. We follow all our players very closely. He will have to continue doing well for Everton and continue to show that this is a player that deserves to be one of the first names on the England teamsheet, like he is one of the first names on the Everton teamsheet. So it’s entirely up to him.

“He has certainly not done his cause any harm [this week]. All you can do when you are given a chance to play for England is to go out against whoever that opponent may be and do very well. You can’t start seeding opponents and say, ‘You did well, but it didn’t count because it wasn’t this opponent’. All you can do is say, ‘What are you expecting from me, what sort of game are you looking for from me?’ and then deliver it.”

The same applies to England. Their group has been derided as E for Easy, but it was not as weak as it is being painted. Switzerland took Argentina to extra time in the 2014 World Cup, England only scrambled past Slovenia in the 2010 World Cup. In this qualifying tournament Spain lost to Slovakia, Germany lost to Poland and Ireland, the Dutch lost twice to Iceland, Portugal lost to Albania and Italy were held by Bulgaria and scored twice in two matches against Malta. Easy matches on paper still have to be won on grass or, as on Monday, artificial turf. England have reason to be optimistic about next summer, if not yet confident.