England captain Steven Gerrard would do well to keep his mouth shut before matches rather than hyping up the England squad then not delivering on the pitch, in the eyes of former playmaker Alan Hudson.
Hudson, who was referring to England’s World Cup clash against Italy at the weekend, spoke of his grievances towards England’s 34-year-old skipper:
“I was very disappointed with Gerrard on Saturday, he appeared to be just standing around with nobody to mark.
“I want to know what Gerrard does, if he’s not scoring a spectacular goal from 30 yards he’s really not doing a lot, in my opinion.”
Hudson, who played for Chelsea and England, said one of his pet hates is players who talk to the press before big games, hyping up how focussed they are and determined to do England proud, yet when it comes down to the nitty gritty, not producing the goods on the field.
He told Football Express News: “Gerrard is one of those players that talks a lot before a game saying things like ‘this is our time, we’ve got to stand up and be counted,’ and ‘we’re not going to let the country down.’
“Then for 90 minutes on the pitch he’s hardly seen and then after they lose the game he says, ‘we let the country down.’
“Well, that’s just not acceptable.”
Hudson said top players like Gerrard earn in the region of £200K a week to play the game and should be focussing more on their football and leaving the talking to the manager.
“Gerrard gets £200K a week to play the game, not £200K a week to talk about the game before matches then be a massive let-down. Talking is Roy Hodgson’s job.
“It really annoys me because in my day we played for peanuts and we didn’t shoot our mouths of, we just went out and got on with it,” he added.