Just 180 minutes of football separate England from a place at the Brazil 2014 World Cup but if Roy Hodgson’s side are to stand a chance of qualifying they must beat Montenegro tonight, without any Arsenal stars in the starting XI.
As it stands England are just one point ahead of Ukraine and Montenegro in Group H but will be buoyed by their 4-0 win over Moldova last month, in which Steven Gerrard, Rickie Lambert and Danny Welbeck all made it onto the scoresheet. Montenegro drew with Poland 1-1 in early September but if the broadsheets are to be believed, Branko Brnovic’s side are viewing tonight’s game as a potential giant-killing.
First time round England could only muster a 1-1 draw with Montenegro away in Podgorica after a late goal from Dejan Damjanovic, and Hodgson is well aware of the dangers posed by the opposition.
“They’re well organised and a tough team to play, they’re dangerous from set-plays and a big and strong team,” he told the FA. “They’re a team that knows how to defend and a team that will ask questions of us too.
“They will expect us to take the game to them and take the initiative and they’ll be trying to use the counter-attacking opportunities. So we can’t throw players forward to try and score goals and leave ourselves exposed. We know the task ahead and we can’t criticise Montenegro for that.”
Thomson Sport will be the official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2014 blog hosted on FootballFanCast.com and are the FA’s official Travel Partner, so if you want to join England in Brazil next year then head HERE: http://bit.ly/tuiblog
Get involved in the action on Twitter also with the #getmetobrazil
Would appreciate if you’d flag the sponsored content so that I could skip it. From the headline was expecting analysis, critical thinking, objective judgment of the international game.
Rusty. If Untold is paid for carrying this advert that is OK by me for that money at least helps to pay for the cost of Untold.
We don’t have to read the ad. I haven’t.
“Can England win without Arsenal stars?” Perhaps the most invisible analysis UA has ever run? The answer of course is “Yes” but like Colario, helping UA is all well, but, don’t let Mammon screw up the site.
Not so much can England win, but can other countries win. Bendtner (2), Ozil (1) & Giroud (1) all scored in their matches yesterday.
For sure England can win and they did. But if they include Arsenal players, maybe we can have more goals. Bendtner, Giroud and Ozil scored. Lol!
Why is untold carrying adverts by Thompson, as I recall they used to sponsor that shower from up the lane. I boycott their holidays as a result, and HP printers, Holstein Pils etc etc
To be honest if England couldn’t beat a Montenegro team deprived of it’s best goalkeeper, best defender plus inspirational centre forward & captain then England would really be the laughing stock of world football.
Next up the already eliminated Poland team and I very much doubt the likes of Robert Lewandowski will be allowed to play.
Brace yourselves Brazil, England are coming.
@jax
Apologies to Giroud who scored twice, not once as I previously posted.
@Gf60 I’ve your post in the Jimmy Bloomfield article and have replied to it.
Yes they can and did. A bit OTT over Townsend I thought. Scored a good goal, but like the rest of them did the minimum you would expect against severely weakened opposition. Still being a Spud always warrents a bit of extra excitement from our media.
Nice to see our boys scoring. More important to see them all back fit and healthy though.
yeah the first games of this int’l break have been brilliant for arsenal players. even good ol bendtner went out and scored a brace, punctuated by a stupid taking-off-the-shirt yellow, which means he’s suspended for their next game.
i have no idea WTF TGSTEL was thinking when he did that, but that sheer spark of stupidity has to be ingrained in him deep down to his very core… actually, check that, i think i understand it: he’s frustrated with being THE GREATEST STRIKER THAT EVER LIVED and being marooned @ lowly arsenal with a laughable salary (it makes me laugh anyways =) so once again going out for his country and scoring = some sort of catharsis for dear ol niklas; i get that part of it, you know, the need to release whatever pent up rage he’s got inside of him…. but to go and take off your shirt when you’ve already gotten a yellow in the last game?
yeap, that’s our bendtner. TGSTEL.
also, cheers to england for handling business and hopefully working in some of those arsenalites on tuesday will be enough to put them in a position to qualify for the WC proper. it’s gonna be jack likely starting and then gibbs on the bench, right? i hope walcott’s out for it, cuz i’d hate to see him rush back and risk further injury, especially with the notorious run of fixtures arsenal has got coming up come the end of october into november.
then again, maybe we live in bizarro world cuz i saw that benzema, a man who i’m quite alright with saying “no” to acquiring, scored. and when benzema scores for france you gotta quickly dart over to a newspaper rack and check the date and make sure that you’re still in the same universe.