Spurs ace points to positives for England

Thursday, September 13, 2012
7:40 AM

A point gained is how Jermaine Defoe is viewing Englands 1-1 draw with Ukraine in Tuesday night’s World Cup qualifier at Wembley, insisting the national side did the right things.

The Tottenham striker looked to have bagged his third goal in as many international games only for it to be ruled out for a dubious foul. The visitors then took the lead and it needed a late penalty from Chelsea’s Frank Lampard to save the day.

Defoe led the line on his own at Wembley but the Spurs ace is just happy to play and adapt to whatever system Roy Hodgson employs.

“It is sometimes hard work on your own up front but it is important to be patient, keep running, and make sure your movement good. That is what the manager said to me,” Defoe explained.

“I said to the boys that Ukraine were getting tired towards the end of the game, that I’ll keep running and making those runs and we’ll get in.

“You might not get as many touches as you would like in games. Sometimes when playing 4-4-2, you can drop in and it’s not a problem because you’ve got another man up front.

“But it is important to stay high and to be patient and clever with your movement.

“We created a lot of chances and maybe could have nicked it. I thought we were unlucky.

“There was great energy in the second half, we kept it going and they looked really tired. We are looking at it as a point gained.”

He added: “The overall performance was really good.

“Everyone worked really hard and on another night we would have won.

“It’s a good result, we’ve got to play a lot of games in this group and, if you look at the team and the way we are playing, it doesn’t look like we are going to get beat to be fair.”