Thomas Tuchel has thrown John Stones\u2019s hopes of going to the World Cup into doubt after the defender\u2019s latest injury setback forced him to pull out of England\u2019s qualifiers against Andorra and Serbia.<\/p>\n
Stones is one of the squad\u2019s leading figures but he has been held back by a series of fitness issues during the past 18 months and has not featured at international level since last October. It is frustrating state of affairs for Tuchel, who hoped to start the Manchester City centre-back when England host Andorra at Villa Park on Saturday. Stones has been a regular at recent tournaments but he is yet to play for Tuchel, who made it clear that the 31-year-old will only remain an important part of his plans ahead of next summer\u2019s World Cup if he stays fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big fan of John, his personality and his quality\u201d England\u2019s head coach told BBC 5Live. \u201cHe could be an important figure, of course, but he needs to be available. He wants to be available and he\u2019s a top professional, so he is the most upset in all this because he does really everything to be fit and struggles then with these minor issues from time to time that cost him game time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope he keeps his spirit up because he will stay important for us. I saw in these three days what he what he means to the group as a personality and as a social glue within the group. What he brings to the pitch is outstanding quality as a central defender and possibly as a pivotal No 6, but we have to adapt to it. He\u2019s now not available anymore. We will find solutions for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuchel planned to give Stones, who has played in City\u2019s first three league games this season, a prominent role during this camp. Along with starting him at the back against Andorra, England\u2019s head coach revealed that he was considering using him in defensive midfield for the trip to Serbia on Tuesday. \u201cI think he would have maybe started as a central defender in this match, but he was in contention for playing No 6 for us as well,\u201d Tuchel told Talksport. \u201cIt was in our thoughts to maybe use him as a six against Serbia. But listen, this is how it is. He\u2019s very upset. He\u2019s very upset because he does everything on a daily basis to be fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow he has again minor issues. It will cost him two caps for the national team. It will maybe cost him some minutes for Manchester City. He was a big part of camp so far. But, yeah, it is what it is. We have to adapt. We have to find solutions. We will have a strong team tomorrow, and we will come up with solutions without John.\u201d<\/p>\n
England\u2019s other options at centre-back are Ezri Konsa, Dan Burn, Marc Gu\u00e9hi and Jarell Quansah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas Tuchel has thrown John Stones\u2019s hopes of going to the World Cup into doubt after the defender\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-122038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}