Size means nothing with Iceland, says Rooney

Hodgson and Rooney spoke to reporters ahead of England’s round of 16 game against Iceland on Monday.

“There is no doubt about what he has done”, the England boss said of Lagerback, sat alongside captain Rooney.

With Wayne Rooney in his new role as a midfield conductor, England has enjoyed a lot of possession in each of its three group games at the European Championship. He doesn’t have the wealth of talent at his disposal that I believe I have as England manager.

Hodgson said he expected a “very difficult” game on Monday.

But he said: “I am not even contemplating going out to Iceland”. I haven’t got a clue what you’re referring to.

Hodgson has known Lagerback for around 40 years and is wary of the threat posed by his long-term friend’s team. There is no correlation sometimes between how well a team has done and the result.

“As you get older with more experience, you do force yourself to only worry about the things you can change, the things you can do to make certain that when you look in the mirror, as the players go out onto the field, you can look at yourself and say, ‘what else could I have done?'”

England’s Jamie Vardy, left, England’s Wayne Rooney, second left, England goalkeeper Joe Hart, second right, and England goalkeeper Fraser Forster during a pitch walkabout session at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice, France, Sunday, June 26, 2016. “There is no more time to be wasteful”. “So I’d like to put one or two of them right”, he said.

“The critism is very simple”.

“If you think you’ve done that, that gives you not only comfort but it means you don’t agonise any more because you’ve handed the game over to the people who matter: the players”.

“It hasn’t affected our preparations for this game”. So everyone was hunky dory and fine.

“It’s just for the players to play and hopefully we will beat England”. I think it bodes well for the future, what we’re doing here. But we haven’t won, so therefore results are bad, so therefore we are bad.

“That’s life. I accept it. I’m not trying to gloss over that in any way”. But I can’t be as facile as to say: ‘Yeah, you’re right. What we’ve seen on the training pitch from Raheem, he’s been fantastic: sharp, taking players on, scoring goals. “It wasn’t when he came on”.

“Icelandic football will go up in reputation and the way we approach football will be different. So we had better start making sure we score our goalscoring chances”.