Tuesday, May 27, 2014

HODGSON TO TRY ROONEY AND STURRIDGE PARTNERSHIP

England Boss Roy Hodgson says England's final World Cup preparations will let him see how Wayne Rooney and Daniel Sturridge work as a strike partnership.
Sturridge, 24, scored 27 goals in 37 appearances for club and country last season as one part of Liverpool's SAS partnership with Luis Suarez.
"We've seen a lot of the Sturridge-Suarez partnership but not a lot of Rooney-Sturridge," said Hodgson.
"They haven't had a lot of time to play together, and now's our chance."
Sturridge will be competing with Rickie Lambert, 32, of Southampton and the Manchester United pair of Danny Welbeck, 23, and Rooney for a starting berth up front in Brazil.
"From this week we start to move away from a bigger focus on fitness and getting people in the right shape, to tactical preparation," added Hodgson.
"That's when the partnerships will start to develop."
Manchester United's Rooney, 28, and Welbeck have the advantage of appearing together for both club and country.
In contrast Sturridge and Rooney have only played together five times for England - a total of 336 minutes - but their partnership has resulted in four goals so far.
Both were on target in 4-1 win over Montenegro at Wembley in October, while Rooney opened the scoring in the 2-0 win over Poland four days later which secured England's place at the World Cup.
Sturridge then scored the only goal of the game in the 1-0 friendly win over Denmark in March.
"It won't just be Rooney-Sturridge, we will be working on Welbeck and Lambert as well," Hodgson added.
"I think it's too early to start making big bold statements and judgements on Rooney-Sturridge partnership being X or Y because we haven't seen enough of it."
It remains to be seen how the strikers will be used in Brazil, with Hodgson previously favouring a three-man attack, with Rooney, Sturridge and Welbeck all starting.
England face Peru on Friday, 30 May at Wembley before flying out to Miami, where they will play their final World Cup warm-up matches against Ecuador on 4 June and Honduras three days later.

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