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Take your pick from today's massive range of angles on the question of whether Dave Seaman will be playing for England against Finland on Saturday:
ZooFootball say "Seaman set for England withdrawal". His international future is "in the balance". Theyv'e got quotes from
Wenger about the injury: apparently he woke up on Sunday morning
with the same back problem he had in Munich. It is apparently a new problem for the keeper, quite different to the on-off neck trouble he's had for a while. Wenger is optimistic that this won't turn into a serious long-term, problem but "you never know".
It's reassuring to hear Wenger say that he didn't leave Dave out to protect him for the England game (it appears that Gerard Houllier may have done just that with Steven Gerrard yesterday).
"I care about England, but not as much as that!", said the Arsenal boss.
Soccernet agree, and quote Wenger as saying "I spoke to Eriksson's assistant Tord Grip before the game and told him that if
England needed him, he wasn't definitely out." Which suggests that England probably won't use Seaman.
With Martyn Wright and James available, England don't need Seaman.
However, a later Soccernet report has Seaman saying "the injury isn't too serious and I would like to think I will be able to report for England."
Midas Soccer go one further and say that, according to their
(presumably psychic) source, Seaman will start against Finland.
What's certain is that Ray Parlour won't be there. He missed Eriksson's first match, the friendly against Spain, through injury, and has not made it back into the squad for the Finland and
Albania games. He's only just made it back to the Arsenal team though, so it's not all over for him.
With Martin Keown still out, our only other representative will be Ashley Cole. Although there's no doubt that he deserves it,
this one is a little surprising. Cole still hasn't played for the
full England team, and the 2 players who got the debuts at left-back ahead of him against Spain both impressed. But while
Chris Powell stays in, Michael Ball misses out.
Also on this topic, Tony Adams has reportedly rejected an appeal by the FA to delay his international retirement. Arsene Wenger has been quoted as saying "I'm not surprised England asked him to reconsider because of the quality of the player. But he has made his decision and you have to respect it. He shouldn't be under pressure to come back because Tony knows it would only be for the short-term and I'm not sure that would be right. Of course, he has special leadership qualities but at some stage England have to do without Tony Adams." |