Wayne Rooney set to miss both of England's final Euro 2016 qualifiers with injury
Rooney suffered an ankle injury in Manchester United's defeat to Arsenal last weekend
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Your support makes all the difference.Wayne Rooney is expected to miss both England’s final Euro 2016 qualifiers against Estonia on Friday and Lithuania three days later due to an ankle injury that has prevented him from training with Roy Hodgson’s squad over the previous two days.
Rooney sat out training again on Wednesday and the likelihood is that he will return to Manchester United after the Estonia game at Wembley. He will be presented with a commemorative golden boot before the game by Sir Bobby Charlton to mark his record-breaking 50th England goal against Switzerland last month. There will also be a Football Association-sponsored crowd-surfer banner in Rooney’s honour.
The striker picked up the ankle injury against Arsenal on Sunday and the final two games are set to be the only two he has missed in the whole qualifying campaign. The likelihood is that a number of regulars will be sent back to their clubs after tomorrow, with Hodgson selecting an experimental side for the Lithuania game. Danny Ings and Jonjo Shelvey also missed training yesterday with injuries.
Theo Walcott may well find himself leading the attack in Rooney’s place and, if so, the Arsenal man said yesterday that he will be imposing his new-found streak of aggression at Wembley.
Walcott’s performance for Arsenal in the 3-0 win over United on Sunday has been described as his best ever for the club, where he will mark 10 years’ service in January. Never was his new approach better exemplified than his sliding tackle on Bastian Schweinsteiger.
Now 26, Walcott said that the added aggression was a result of a conversation with Arsène Wenger, who has tried to introduce an extra element to the striker’s game since his return from cruciate ligament surgery at the start of the year. As a lone forward competing with Olivier Giroud for the one place at Arsenal, he said that it has improved him.
I actually asked him, ‘Do you want me to start kicking people?’
“Maybe he [Wenger] has sensed I’ve had more aggression,” he said. “When you are tracking back and tackling people like Schweinsteiger – people wouldn’t imagine that Theo Walcott is going to tackle Schweinsteiger. No, it’s never going to happen.
“But again that’s going back to Alexis [Sanchez] as well – what he does differently – I think it’s important to be aggressive. The game’s getting more physical. Everyone’s getting better and you see it this year in the Premier League. It’s so open. Everyone can beat each other this year.”
Wenger had told Walcott that he wanted his approach to be different. “I actually asked, ‘Do you want me to start kicking people?’” Walcott said. “That was my reaction. He said, ‘No, I’m not saying that’. He wanted me to be more aggressive in terms of running at players, closing them down, tracking back, being there and in their faces.”
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