Roy Hodgson has warned that it will be a mistake to view Wales as a one-man team when England come up against Gareth Bale & Co at Euro 2016 in June.
Bale scored seven of Wales’ 11 goals in the qualifying campaign but the England manager said his opposite number Chris Coleman will have contingency plans in mind if something happens to the Real Madrid star.
The British teams meet on June 16 in Lens in an afternoon kick off for their second match of Group B, with Hodgson’s side playing Russia first in Marseille on June 11 and Slovakia the final opponents in St Etienne on June 20.
“If people are going to tell me that Wales are a team who relies on one man then I don’t accept that; you can never build a team around one player,” Hodgson said.
“At the moment Gareth Bale might be scoring a goal a game but come June that might not be the case, or he might be injured.
“I have a certain experience of that happening and disrupting your plans: Chris has been able to put together a more settled team than us.
“We have had a number of our players not available through injury. You cannot rely on a fixed team.”
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Hodgson has been buoyed by top-level backing from the English Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn that he is the man the governing body want to take England to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, if his team can demonstrate progress at next summer’s European Championship.
No specific target has been set. It is thought that reaching the quarter-finals with England viewed as playing good football would be viewed as enough progress, especially coming from the low base of the disappointment of last year’s World Cup humiliation and elimination after just two matches.
England did reach the Euro 2012 quarter-finals when Hodgson had only been in charge a few weeks, but the performances were low on style.
Hodgson, 68, says his current squad, which won every match in qualification, is a very different beast to even the 2014 set-up.
He added: “Every generation has different players. The team playing for England now is quite different from 2014 and completely different from 2012. I don’t base my thinking on what’s happened in the past.
“We must respect our other opponents, too. Slovakia is a country I like and admire which had a fantastic qualifying campaign. Martin Skrtel was a very good player when I was at Liverpool and he’s even better now, a really important player for Slovakia.
“Russia too is a team I have met in my coaching career, but they qualified well and are a threat.”
The FA will now start planning in earnest for the tournament, with officials making visits to the three venues for England’s group games, while work is already under way on the training base at Chantilly.
Three teams from each group could qualify, with 16 out of the 24 finalists going into the knockout stage. Whoever wins Group B will be certain of facing a team that finished third in another group, meaning there is a good chance of progressing to the quarter-finals.
Northern Ireland have a tough task after being drawn in Group C with world champions Germany, Poland and Ukraine, while Martin O’Neill’s Republic of Ireland side may have an even more daunting tournament having to face Belgium, currently top of the Fifa world rankings, Italy and Sweden in Group E.
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