By Anthony Palmer
Football fans it was another great match for us on Friday night, goals galore springs to mind. The England 3 lion’s v Lithuania for the European 2016 qualifier. 67 year old, England team manager Roy Hodgson has won six games in total and four of those has been whilst at the European 2016 qualifiers. England beating Lithuania means that England have 15 points to go from five Euro 2016 qualifiers. 94th in world football ranking- Lithuania have won their first two qualifying games, against San Marino and Estonia. Losing 2-0 at home to Slovenia and 4-0 away to Switzerland.
“The pressure is all on England to win, so I believe we can take some points from the game”.
England only have to look at their magnificent team and know with the likes of Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane, who at present are both on goal scoring form that they had this game in the bag from the get go. For those of you who missed it, the match was an evening 7.45pm kick off that sold out Wembley. England striker Wayne Rooney is now in need of four more goals to surpass Sir Bobby, Wayne expressed “It would be great if I could equal or beat the record but my concentration is 100 per cent on the victories on Friday and Tuesday,’’ said Rooney. “It will be a fantastic moment for myself, a proud moment. Hopefully it will happen, and sooner rather than later, but I have to keep concentrating on what has got me to this position.” Come on Rooney.
The first half of the match was never goner disappoint us with plenty of action from England, the game started off with good pace from England as they controlled the pace of the game looking comfortable on the ball it was an impressive start. Positive start from England, Arsenal’s forward Danny Welbeck showed nice foot work in the box before his shot across the goal was parried away. The ball was collected by Rooney who put it away the goal in the sixth minute with a brilliant header, like he always does! To start the 3 lions on their way at Wembley. The opposing side’s team player, Zaliukas stuck out his arm to blatantly stop a ball forward leaving him to fashion a yellow card.
With the game closing in on half time Danny Welbeck put England in cruise control just before the whistle blew with a tap in to set up an exciting second start to the second half. Captain Rooney, a Three Lions side showed four alterations from the last qualifying match against Slovenia in November, with Leighton Baines, Phil Jones, Michael Carrick and Fabian Delph coming in to intervene. In the 16 minute! Rooney looped a header back across the goal which bounced off the crossbar, with Henderson’s follow up on the rebound deflected over. Danny Welbeck, Wayne Rooney and Raheem Sterling gave the Lithuania problems when they were switching places causing the visiting team problems.
England’s possession reign 68% over Lithuania’s 32% and England claimed a generous 8 corners to their one. Vytautas Andriuskevicius won a free kick in the defensive half.
Wayne Rooney crossed low into the box which lands to Raheem Sterling as he runs in from the back to tap home from a central position. This leads Harry Kane up to his first international goal on his very own debut in the 73rd minute. In the 80th minute, we witnessed another yellow card, a direct run from Sterling towards the edge of the box is stopped by a hefty collision with Andriuskevicius, who I will tell you came off far worse than Sterling did. Sterling is slapped with a yellow card after receiving treatment, whilst the Lithuania left-back remains down. There were plenty of fouls about and Lithuania topped us with 13-11. We saw fouls by England’s Raheem Sterling just before half time and Lithuania’s Donatas Kazlauskas into 30 seconds of the 4 minutes of added time.
Juicy for a Friendly game is an understatement.
