KEIR RADNEDGE at WEMBLEY: England manager Roy Hodgson was content, in public at least, to celebrate the positives rather than the negatives after a 3-2 win in which they twice had to come from behind.

This was a second win in two days for Hodgson after he had bossed the under-21s to their six-goal thrashing of the young Scots on Tuesday.

Hodgson said: “It’s been a very positive week for me. I saw a lot of positives – and negatives as well – but I prefer to concentrate on the positives and hope that, in three weeks’ time, the bulk of these guys will be fit and that the under-21 boys will keep banging on the door because they certainly opened my eyes this week, some of them.

“We made life difficult for ourselves by conceding twice and going behind twice against the run of play but all credit to Scotland, they were sharp on the counter attack but it’s very satisfying to win a game like that when you come from behind twice and all the more satisfying when you get a fairy tale story like Rickie Lambert.

“He could have gone away with the match ball. Maybe he needed to save a couple goals for later on. I guess he’s done enough [to keep his place in the squad] though there might be a bit more competition next time.”

Reaction

Hodgson was pleased with the reaction the team showed in hitting back after sloppy defending to give the Scots a 1-0 and then 2-1 leads.

He said: “Maybe the most positive thing tonight was  to come from behind because that might happen to us in the qualifiers and when you have to chase games there’s always a risk you might get caught like that, as we did in particular with Kenny Miller’s goal.”

Hodgson praised the contribution of Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney and acknowledged the encouragement he had received from Old Trafford boss David Moyes to play the striker – even though “it was his first competitive game of the season and under normal circumstances you wouldn’t expect it to be playing it against Scotland in front of 80,000.”

Scotland manager Gordon Strachan expressed his disappointment at the result and blamed lapses in concentration.

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