Roy Hodgson has hit back at critics of Raheem Sterling and says it will be a long time before he gives up on the Liverpool attacker.
The England manager took a bit of a swipe at the press on Merseyside which has had Sterling’s contract negotiations – or lack of – at the front and centre for some time now.
And, despite another poor performance today during England’s goalless encounter with the Republic, Hodgson is on Sterling’s side but he reckons that the 20-year-old needs to rise above the talk and the jibes and the jeers from the crowd which were prevalent again in Dublin.
“I think he’s going through a bad time, publically” Hodgson said after the game. “You can’t expect people to just shrug off the sort of criticism he’s been receiving, not least from the local press up in Liverpool.
“That tends to fan out and it becomes national pretty quickly so we can’t expect him to – I think he did ever so well because he tried ever so hard to shrug it off, to let his football do the talking.
“I think that he probably needed this game to realise that, if he is going to fully get it out of his system, he’s going to have to work even harder still and he’s going to have to get an even thicker skin than maybe he’s got at the moment.
“The only reason we took him off today wasn’t because we were particularly dissatisfied with his performance, it was to give people a game.”
Asked if he is beginning to have reservations about Raheem’s role in his attacking set-up, the England boss was defiant.
“I trust Sterling,” he said. “Players are not robots. He’s done some fantastic things for us and maybe today he didn’t hit those heights but we have a long way to go and it will take a lot before I or the English national team stray from Raheem Sterling.”
