Raheem Sterling was sharp and hungry and had his best game for England, says Danny Murphy

Raheem Sterling in action against Colombia
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
Danny Murphy4 July 2018

I thought Raheem Sterling had his best game in an England shirt against Colombia .

He was trying to get on the ball, he was strong and he was making runs in behind. Yes, he did not score but actually his all-round game was as good as I have seen.

He looked sharp, hungry and was a real threat. I have criticised him but his performance was superb.

I thought Jesse Lingard was excellent again and Harry Kane’s mentality to continually take penalties is superb. There were some good performances from our lads, we just did not have that killer instinct in the parts of the game when we were on top.

Sweden are a well-organised side and they will be hard to break down on Saturday. We will need to be patient against them and we will have to work hard to beat them. But we will control possession and Gareth Southgate and the coaching staff will be working hard on turning our dominance into more goalscoring chances. We might need to risk the ball a bit more and play it forward a bit quicker. But if we can play with the tempo we have seen in some games, and then convert when we are on top then we should have nothing to fear.

We will have to be careful because they are decent on set-plays and are a good counter-attacking team. But there are much better teams we could be playing.

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