Carrick suffers ankle injury

Mario Gaspar brought an otherwise drab friendly in Alicante to life with a stunning volleyed goal to help Spain a 2-0 victory over England in global friendly action.

Gaspar decided the contest with a rare moment of quality four minutes later when he acrobatically connected with Fabregas’s chipped pass to send a looping volley over a helpless Hart.

The Manchester United midfielder was taken off the field on a stretcher in the first minute of stoppage time after he suffered an ankle injury against the European champions in Alicante.

England returned from Spain on Saturday and, following the tragic events in Paris on Friday night, it was decided that the meeting with France would go ahead.

The Three Lions have won 27 and drawn 12 games during Hodgson’s time in charge, the equivalent of 93 points.

Twelve minutes later the hosts doubled their lead as Cazorla curled a low effort in off a post to end a run of 15 games unbeaten for England.

“Spain are a world-class side, they keep the ball well, play good possession football, but we were well-organised”. In fact, England had as many chances, all of them made on the counter-attack with frantic breakaways, more often than not down the Spanish left.

England’s central midfield of Michael Carrick and Fabian Delph tracked their counterparts as best they could but this was a game when getting close to the man in possession was as much as they could do.

“People need to stay patient”.

“We saw they had a disappointing World Cup like ourselves, but they are a good team and we’ve got work to do”. We’ve got another tough test against France, which we want to win. We had our chances against Spain.

Despite losing, Hodgson also remains confident that his team can only improve between now and next summer, especially since he still has several big name players set to return from injury. “Hopefully still playing for England and still playing at a high level”.

Spain looked a class above an experimental line-up and at times England looked in awe, sitting back as the passing “carousel” constructed by players of the pedigree of Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets weaved its way around them.

“It will keep him out of Tuesday and I fear it will be longer than that which is wonderful misfortune for him because Michael comes back and we are looking to play him maybe in both games but he is another player missing so we are a little bit wounded in that respect”.