Jordan Henderson: England cannot rely on Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling to bail out defence

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Dan Kilpatrick @Dan_KP11 September 2019

Jordan Henderson said England cannot make a habit of being bailed out by Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho.

Gareth Southgate’s side recorded a fourth straight win last night but had to fight back from 1-0 down and twice conceded in a sloppy second half.

While captain Kane, Sterling and two-goal Sancho looked unstoppable, England’s defensive fragility was again exposed when Michael Keane lost possession for Valon Berisha’s 34-second opener and a mistake by Declan Rice led to the forward’s second goal before Harry Maguire gave away a clumsy penalty.

“We’ll be disappointed, especially with their goals,” said Henderson. “At times we did some really good stuff with the ball but we need to be defensively better. It’s important to keep clean sheets. We can’t always rely on the front three to outscore everyone. We need to defend properly as a team first and foremost.

“I bet it was a good game for the neutrals. I thought attacking-wise we were really good but we gave the ball away very sloppily. The objective was to get two wins [against Bulgaria and Kosovo] and perform really well in both of them, which we did at times, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. We know that.

“I thought we reacted really well to their [opening] goal, went on to control the first half, scored some brilliant goals and created some brilliant chances, so it was a great first half but we need to do that for 90 minutes.

“[Kosovo] want to press high up, they want to play. They were unbeaten in two years before last night, so we knew they would be dangerous, but I think it was more our sloppiness in the second half to gift them a couple of goals.”

West Ham midfielder Rice admitted mistakes had taken the gloss off the win but insisted they would never change their approach under Southgate.

“A mistake from myself, sloppy, I could have done better there and it took the gloss off it,” he said. “Maguire’s given a penalty away, Keano made a mistake. But it’s part and parcel of football. We are never going to be perfect. The main thing is we got the three points and we are unbeaten.

“Our approach won’t change. The way we have been working on building from the back, playing through the lines, the manager is never going to change that.”

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