Roy Keane says he "can't believe how bad" England player is in brutal attack
Roy Keane launched a brutal attack on an England star and said "he cannot believe how bad" he is.
The Three Lions suffered a shock first ever defeat to Greece in the Nations League at Wembley on Thursday but bounced back with a 3-1 victory over Finland in Helsinki.
Keane was on punditry duty for ITV for the clash and as expected, had plenty of strong opinions on the Greece loss.
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England lacked creativity but they were also all over the place defensively as
And the former Manchester United skipper did not shy away from ripping into Liverpool star Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Having been deployed as a midfield in an unsuccessful Gareth Southgate experiment, Alexander-Arnold is back playing as a defender.
He made a first ever start at left-back against Finland and when asked about him never playing there before, Keane said: "If you saw him the other night [vs Greece] defending, it looked like he'd never played right-back before."
Alexander-Arnold scored a stunning free-kick to make it 2-0 to England on Sunday evening and might just have pocketed a bit of cash following a wager with fellow scorer Jack Grealish.
But while Keane praised the "great technique" for the set-piece strike and his range of passing, he could not resist calling out Alexander-Arnold's defending once again.
In the post-match analysis, Keane commented: "You give time to Trent, because his decision making and quality of passing is fantastic, but I can’t believe how bad he is defensively and against better teams he’ll be punished.”
Alexander-Arnold was handed the Man of the Match award for his display and former England striker Ian Wright was a little more measured in his assessment of how he fared.
He explained: "I don’t think he did much defensively to make you say ‘OK that’s the position he’s going to play’.
"But from a creative point of view, Lee Carsley wants as many creative players in the deep end of his football team as possible. I can’t see it being something that happens too frequently.”
England return to action next month with two final Nations League games against Greece and the Republic of Ireland.
Josh Lawless