Hodgson claims England’s fate is still in their hands

England manager Roy Hodgson is determined England still have excellent chances of reaching the direct qualification for the 2014 World Cup despite the 1-1 draw with Montenegro.

Hodgson said he was disappointed that after an impressive start to the game which saw Wayne Rooney scoring the opener in the sixth minute England slipped into second-half misery with Montenegro completely dominating possession and putting the game on equal terms by courtesy of Damjanovic’s goal in the 75th minute.

He said: “I’m disappointed that after such a good first half we couldn’t maintain that level of performance and win the game. I thought we came close but we must give Montenegro credit, they played well of course in the second half. Everything was looking good up to half-time but unfortunately there is always an opponent to take into account as well and backed on by this very, very enthusiastic crowd they were able to up their game slightly. And if you were a neutral in the game you wouldn’t deny them the relevance of their equaliser.”

“It’s still a little bit disappointing we have only come away with one point, but having said that we knew it was going to be a difficult game tonight. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to win here so maybe we should accept the fact that, given we couldn’t maintain our level of performance through the 90 minutes, coming away with one point at least keeps us in control of the group. But we move on. We have an interesting period coming up. The group is still there to be won and still in our hands so we must make certain that when September and October come around we are in good shape,” he said.