Tony Adams worried by England defence...'it may be good for TV, but it doesn't win you tournaments'

James Benge10 June 2016

Arsenal legend Tony Adams is concerned that England’s defence will be their Achilles heel at Euro 2016, with Roy Hodgson’s backline prioritising getting forward and playing expansive football over keeping a clean sheet.

Hodgson named just seven defenders, and a mere three recognised centre-backs, in his 23 man squad for Euro 2016 and chose to frontload his party with attacking options, including five strikers.

Though England emerged from their qualifying group having kept clean sheets in eight of their 10 games the backline has looked increasingly cumbersome over recent matches.

Hodgson’s side have kept just one clean sheet in five games since the turn of the year and both Gary Cahill and John Stones, the candidates to partner Chris Smalling in defence were dropped by their club sides last season.

“All of the seven defenders Roy Hodgson has picked are good athletes at good clubs,” Adams told the Sun. “And probably all comfortable on the ball – even if we do hype up players like John Stones too quickly as English defenders are in short supply these days.

“The problem is more we are not producing defenders with the right mentality. Until we finally learn lessons, we’re going to repeat mistakes that we fail to learn from at tournaments.

“I don’t see too many going out there saying, ‘Right, we’re going to keep a clean sheet today’… The Premier League mindset nowadays is ‘How many can we score today?’

England expected XI vs Russia

1/11

“That may be great for TV but it doesn’t win you international tournaments.”

Cahill is expected to start alongside Smalling for England’s opening game against Russia on Saturday despite a poor campaign for Chelsea that saw him slip to third-choice centre-back before a serious injury to Kurt Zouma.

Tottenham pair Kyle Walker and Danny Rose are the likely full-backs with Joe Hart a certainty to start in goal barring any late injuries.

Interactive 'wallchart': All the fixtures at your fingertips

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in