Hodgson fears for Welbeck and Sturridge

England boss Roy Hodgson is planning for a Euro 2016 campaign without Danny Welbeck or Daniel Sturridge.

Arsenal have indicated that Welbeck will be back in action at Christmas but the England manager has suggested that he be ruled out until March, putting his tournament in jeopardy.

Liverpool striker Sturridge has not played for England since September 2014 because of a series of injuries.

“Welbeck bothers me now,” Hodgson said. “He has already been out for me since March so that’s over four months already. And now I hear it’s another six months, so I can only hope that Danny recovers a bit quicker and hits the ground running.

“Daniel is a little bit the same because it’s getting on for a year now. They are always in my thoughts because I think they’re very good players, and they did extremely well when they were playing in the national team, but I’ve got to make certain there are a few Jamie Vardys and Harry Kanes and Theo Walcotts because we can’t keep going around talking about the ones who aren’t there.

“What we’re trying to develop is a bigger pool of players, to get that up to 30, where we can say: ‘Whatever happens, as long as we can get 23 of this 30, we’ll be OK.’ Then you would have to be very unlucky if two or three in the same position went down. We don’t need more than 30.”

Kane and Walcott came off the bench to score against San Marino but Vardy played 90 minutes without ever looking likely to score.