Date: 3rd October 2014 at 12:49pm
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Roy Hodgson has hit back at Brendan Rodgers’ claim that England could have done more to prevent Daniel Sturridge’s thigh injury, reports the Telegraph.

Sturridge has been left out of Hodgson’s latest squad, after the Liverpool boss said there was no way he could be considered for selection having missed Liverpool’s last six matches in all competitions.

There is still ill-feeling between Rodgers and those at England over the way Sturridge was handled during the last round of international matches, with the Northern Irishman frustrated the striker was not given a rest in training 48 hours after a match.

Instead, Sturridge took part in a high intensity training match and suffered his injury as a result.

But Hodgson has hit back at the Liverpool boss, claiming the striker was more than happy to take part in the session.

“I don’t have any memory of Daniel telling me that he didn’t want to train,’’ said Hodgson. “He never asked that. I’ve never been asked to give 48 hours to a player. The interesting thing for the session where Daniel got injured is that he was quite keen to take part because he was such an important part of it, and we were trying to develop a new [split-striker] system.

“No manager has as yet said to me that players must not train two days after a game. But I understand that with Daniel it is an important player to send back injured. I understand Brendan being unhappy about that.

“I made it very clear to all the players at the start of the week that we’d done quite a lot of two-day recoveries during our time in Brazil and we realised we were just killing ourselves in terms of the training time we have available. If every time we give two days off pre-match or post-match, we will be down to 20 days’ training before Euro 2016. For me that is unacceptable as we need to work with the players.”

Rodgers has also had his say on Raheem Sterling of late, hinting that he would like to see Hodgson rest the teenager for the upcoming international double-header.

 “I am sure he understands I need to win games, just like he does. I need my best players,” he said.

“He has played quite a lot but there must be six or seven payers who have played as many minutes as Raheem. I do not expect managers to tell me whether or not players should be selected.

 “We could have done a completely different training session or Daniel could have done a recovery session which Brendan might have thought was more suitable – but I still couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t have been an injury.’’

 

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