Danny Rose has admitted England became a laughing stock in the wake of Sam Allardyce’s one-game tenure as national manager, and has urged the current squad to kick-start the process of raising public opinion in the World Cup qualifiers this month.
Rose, who has exchanged text messages with Allardyce since his humiliating departure by mutual consent last week, is expected to feature under his third England manager in as many matches when Gareth Southgate’s team take on Malta at Wembley on Saturday. Yet, in the wake of the latest scandal to undermine the setup after the trauma of their elimination from Euro 2016 by Iceland, he concurred with Alan Shearer’s brutal assessment that the national team had been reduced to “the laughing stock of world football”.
“When Roy Hodgson lost his job in the summer we were all there together,” said Rose, who ended Tottenham Hotspur’s victory against Manchester City nursing a tight hamstring and joined Theo Walcott and Ryan Bertrand undertaking gym work at St George’s Park on Tuesday.
“We all saw the distress in Roy’s face at the time, so it wasn’t a nice experience and it made us feel guilty, as we should have been because we didn’t beat Iceland. There’s only so much stick a manager can take and there has to be a point where the players look at themselves and say: ‘This is not good enough.’
“With Sam, it came from nowhere. I don’t want to say it’s a mess, but it’s not nice for our game. I saw Alan Shearer say English football has become a laughing stock and, while it’s hard to say, I agree a bit: with a manager losing his job after one game. It’s not good in any sense and, whatever stance the FA takes after the four games [initially earmarked for Southgate in his role as interim manager], I hope the next England manager will be one for the long-term and help us to improve and get better in tournaments.
“But the players, the manager and all the staff have got to take it on ourselves to try to lift the opinion of English football over the next few games, starting with a positive performance on Saturday against Malta and then another positive performance against Slovenia next week.”
That message was touched upon by Southgate in a team meeting held to welcome the squad to St George’s Park and debrief the Slovakia performance.
Rose sent Allardyce a text following confirmation he was to leave his position after only 67 days in charge, “thanking him for including me in his first England squad and allowing me to earn another cap”. The 61-year-old duly texted back on Sunday, wishing him luck and commenting on the duel between the left‑back and City’s Raheem Sterling which had left Rose with stud marks on his shin.
The winger has since withdrawn from the squad with a calf injury, and was followed on Tuesday by Glen Johnson. Burnley’s uncapped defender, Michael Keane, has since joined Southgate’s party.
The Spurs defender, who would favour the appointment of an Englishman to the role full-time, suggested the 10 days Allardyce spent with his players around the game in Slovakia had actually left an impression, hinting at a legacy of sorts. “Sam introduced a few team bonding skills – it was only going to improve us a little bit, but the environment didn’t need changing too much,” Rose said.
“There was quite a lot of team bonding, and team building skills, which he felt would help us improve. A lot of stuff like that. It was good, I enjoyed it. He got us into three different groups on one of the activities and you had to go and sit with someone who you are not really close with or hadn’t spent much time with before, and you had to find out when the birthdays are, where they are from, who was the biggest inspiration in their lives ... stuff like that. I was with John Stones and we’re from the same part of the world, and I wouldn’t have know that if we hadn’t done that exercise.”
Rose and his Tottenham club-mates arrived at the national set-up buoyed by their eye-catching display against City, which has hoisted them to the leaders’ shoulder in the Premier League. “It’s still very much early days, but I do feel as if we deserved to win that match,” he added. “We showed Manchester City are beatable. The manager had a game-plan and he knows how to beat Pep Guardiola’s teams as he’d done in Spain, and we fully deserved the win at the weekend. I’m not being cocky or anything, but I felt we were pretty comfortable as well.
“The manager just sets out his game plan from the start of the week, with even the smallest details like (what we should do) from goal kicks. Things like that. He knew what he wanted us to do. We did it and we did it to full capacity. I haven’t had the chance to speak to Mauricio, but I know that he will be over the moon after the game we played on Sunday.”