England striker Ollie Watkins will miss the World Cup qualifier in Latvia on Tuesday because of injury.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old was replaced at half-time of the Three Lions’ 3-0 win against Wales on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Watkins scored his side’s second goal at Wembley but collided with the post late in the first half after missing a chance.<\/p>\n
England boss Thomas Tuchel said afterwards that the Aston Villa forward was “OK” but the striker has returned to Villa and will miss the trip to Riga. <\/p>\n
The Three Lions would qualify for next summer’s World Cup with two matches to spare by beating Latvia.<\/p>\n
Captain Harry Kane missed the Wales match, but Tuchel said before the game he was “convinced” the Bayern Munich striker would be available in Riga.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old trained alongside his England team-mates at Tottenham’s training ground on Monday. <\/p>\n
Newcastle winger Anthony Gordon moved to a central position in the second half in Watkins’ absence at Wembley and could do the same in Riga.<\/p>\n
Marcus Rashford is another option. The Manchester United forward is on loan at Barcelona and prefers to play from the left – but has often been deployed from a central position during his career.<\/p>\n
He has 18 goals for England – the most after Kane in the current squad.<\/p>\n
Watkins made his England debut in 2021 and has scored six goals in 20 appearances.<\/p>\n
The forward has struggled at club level this term, netting just once in 10 games.<\/p>\n
Villa travel to Tottenham on Saturday, 19 October for their first match after the international break. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England striker Ollie Watkins will miss the World Cup qualifier in Latvia on Tuesday because of injury. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-221603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}