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Hodgson: I wasn't about to take off Rooney

Wayne Rooney missed several chances against Estonia © Getty Images

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Roy Hodgson denies he was set to replace Wayne Rooney seconds before the England captain scored the winning goal against Estonia in Tallinn.

ITV Sport reported that Hodgson had submitted the forms for replacing Rooney with Liverpool striker Rickie Lambert before the Manchester United forward fired in a curling 73rd-minute free-kick that gave England a 1-0 win and maximum points from their first three Euro 2016 qualifying matches.

Rooney eventually broke the deadlock with a free-kick in the second half © Getty Images

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But Hodgson told the channel: "We were going to put Rickie Lambert on and we were discussing which player we would take off. We hadn't made up our mind it was going to be Wayne Rooney.

"That's, at least, as far as I know. I was in discussions with other members of my staff. I don't know about forms going in. No doubt you can produce some evidence that a form had gone in, but I don't know. Certainly it wasn't my intention anyway.

"It was more likely to be Danny Welbeck [coming off], and it had to be Danny in the end because he turned his ankle slightly, but there is no danger that he won't be fit."

Hodgson offered a less than glowing assessment of Rooney's overall performance, suggesting his skipper would have been disappointed if he had not scored his 43rd international goal in a game that saw him spurn several opportunities.

"It was a frustrating night for him," Hodgson said. "He had a lot of chances and half chances. He would have been bitterly disappointed if he had come off the pitch without scoring a goal, and he would have blamed himself.

"Luckily he doesn't have to because he scored the winner and we go away with three more points. Although we were clearly superior to Estonia, they are going to cause a lot of other teams problems here because they certainly don't give up and they are not easy to break down."

Rooney looked surprised to be informed by a television reporter that he could have been on the brink of being withdrawn with the match deadlocked at 0-0.

"I've shown over the years I'm always capable of scoring goals, and thankfully that has happened again," he said.

"I think we knew this is how the game was going to go. It's what we said before the game. We have faced teams like this before - they are tough games. We had a lot of the ball and it was tough to break them down.

"Thankfully we got the goal and managed to see the game out, so it was a good win.

"We are playing well. The pleasing thing tonight is we have a young team and we knew it was going to be tough. We got the goal and we have seen the game out well. Nights like this will help us."

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