Gareth Southgate 'devastated' by Trent Alexander-Arnold injury blow
By Tom Gott
England manager Gareth Southgate has confessed he is not feeling good about right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold's chances of playing at the European Championships after the Liverpool man limped off with a muscle injury in Wednesday's 1-0 win over Austria.
After weeks of speculation over whether he would make the squad, Alexander-Arnold was one of four right-backs included and he was given the nod for the first warm-up friendly. But he pulled up in the dying embers of the game and limped down the tunnel, while to add insult to injury, he was weirdly booked by the referee - seemingly for having the nerve to get himself injured.
With just ten days until England kick their Euro campaign off against Croatia, Alexander-Arnold is facing an obvious race against time to recover, and Southgate appeared pretty dejected when quizzed on the situation after the game.
"It's not a good situation that he's had to walk off in some discomfort," Southgate told BBC Radio 5 Live.
"We'll know more details in the next 24 to 48 hours. It looks like a thigh injury - in terms of the full extent, we don't know yet. It's devastating, he's worked hard to earn a spot here. I just hope it's not too serious."
Alexander-Arnold may be forced to pull out of the squad because of this issue, but Southgate remained tight-lipped over who could replace him.
"Let's see how Trent is and then we'll go from there," he told ITV.
There were also some minor concerns over Aston Villa's Jack Grealish, who could be seen with ice strapped to his shin after leaving the match in the 71st minute, but both the player and Southgate were unfazed by the issue.
"With Jack, we just felt that that was enough time," Southgate said (via Sky Sports News). "I think you can see still a little bit of sharpness still coming and we didn't want to overplay him through that period."
Finally, there was an update on Liverpool midfielder Jordan Henderson, who has not featured since undergoing groin surgery in February and surprisingly did not get a run-out against Austria.
Southgate said: "With Jordan, we had hoped to involve him today. That was the original plan. This morning he wasn't so happy with how he felt. We've scanned him just to be certain. There's no problem on the scan so he'll be able to resume training but we've taken a decision to leave him out of this game."