Marcus Rashford must wait for his chance with England… it’s Harry Kane’s time to shine
Alan Shearer believes the Spurs man can finally become the England regular everyone expects and add more goal to the record books
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IT is great to hear Marcus Rashford come out and say he wants to be England’s main striker.
But this is Harry Kane’s time to shine.
He deserves his chance to lead the line for England due to the sheer volume of Premier League goals he has scored in the last three years
Kane has netted 20-plus times in the top flight in three straight seasons and is still yet to have a sustained run as our No 1 striker, largely due to injury.
In fact, he has been missing for all six of Gareth Southgate’s games in charge.
But now he is fit, and having ended the season in such outstanding form for Tottenham, Kane has the opportunity to show he should be England’s top centre-forward for years to come.
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And it didn’t work out for him in last summer’s Euros for whatever reason.
Yet people will forgive and forget that if he starts scoring goals at international level on a regular basis, which he is more than capable of doing.
And I would love it if he can carry on his Spurs form in an England shirt against Scotland on Saturday.
Rashford also ended the season very well for Manchester United.
And he is right to come out and say he wants to play down the middle for his country. I like the confidence in him.
I don’t see that having Kane and Rashford wanting to play in the same position is an issue at all. If anything, it is a good thing. It is great for competition and it will spur both players on.
Whether Gareth will want to play both of them down the middle together remains to be seen. I doubt he will.
But if he does do that, I don’t think that would be a problem either.
I think they probably can play together.
Otherwise, Rashford can start wide and come in, making those runs which we have seen him do effectively for United, using his pace.
Then let’s embrace the battle to see who should be our main centre-forward at the World Cup and further into the future.
Of course, for most of the past decade, Wayne Rooney has filled that position.
But it was the correct call by Gareth to leave him out of his squad.
Some people have been calling it a brave decision.
It wasn’t. It was just a sensible one.
He couldn’t put him in the squad because he hasn’t been playing.
Even Rooney himself would say he doesn’t deserve his spot.
That is one of the things that Gareth has to do and he has been doing — picking players who are in form, not players who have done well in the past.
That was one of the mistakes we made in the Euros last year and in countless other tournaments, so I’m glad Gareth seems to have bucked that trend.
I have been impressed with the job he has done as England manager so far.
He took over in difficult circumstances from Sam Allardyce. But I’m delighted he was given the job full-time and he has done everything he could have done.
I also liked that he put his players through a Royal Marines boot camp at the weekend.
It can be very difficult to keep a squad entertained when you have such a long time together before an international, so it was a good idea.
But if the truth be known, Gareth probably can’t wait for next summer to arrive.
The easy part is getting to a tournament, the hard part is producing in a tournament and that’s been our downfall over the years — never more so than last summer.
So people, including myself, won’t stop talking about the Euros until we get to the World Cup in Russia and do something about it.
Nobody is going to take any notice of these qualifiers.
The main objective after the debacle of the Euros was to get people to love England again and to be interested in England again.
Yet while I know we’ve had some decent results, it’s just hard to get up for these games. They are dull.
Even though we are playing against our big rivals in Scotland, these qualifiers just don’t excite me I’m afraid.
I’ll get excited once we get to a tournament and start doing well.
And Gareth, because he’s played at that level, will also know that the same questions will be asked about England until we go to the World Cup and perform.