http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/feb/05/adam-johnson-sunderland-england-recall-roy-hodgson Roy Hodgson is giving serious consideration to reintroducing Adam Johnson into his England squad and potentially holding a World Cup place for him in the absence of the injured Theo Walcott. Hodgson has provisional plans to make a rare trip to Sunderland on Saturday to watch Gus Poyet's team take on Hull City, specifically with a view to making a check on Johnson. The England manager has been encouraged by Johnson's run of seven goals in his last seven games and has pencilled in this weekend because it would also give him the chance to assess Tom Huddlestone's form. Huddlestone is regarded as a potential back-up if any of Hodgson's central midfielders are injured before the World Cup. Yet it is Johnson who is uppermost in Hodgson's thoughts, with the 26-year-old in line for a recall when England play Denmark in a friendly at Wembley on 5 March, their last match before their provisional squad is announced for this summer's tournament in Brazil. Johnson was not even guaranteed a place in the Sunderland team a month ago and has often struggled since joining the club from Manchester City in August 2012. The last of his 12 England caps was nine days before that £10m transfer, in a friendly against Italy in Bern, and he has not been involved in any capacity since he was an unused substitute in the World Cup qualifier against Poland two months later. His sudden burst of form has been instrumental in Sunderland's best spell of the season and his scoring in the 3-0 defeat of Newcastle at the weekend has left Hodgson wondering whether the former Middlesbrough player can finally start performing at that level consistently. Hodgson's need is exacerbated by the knee injury that has ruled Walcott out of the tournament. Danny Welbeck would ordinarily be expected to start on the left side of attack whereas James Milner is a favourite of Hodgson's on the right. The choice, however, is limited. Andros Townsend's dramatic introduction to the England team has been followed by a spell out of the team at Tottenham. Adam Lallana and Jay Rodriguez have impressed for Southampton, though the latter had a disappointing debut for England in the November defeat to Chile. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's return from injury is better news but Ashley Young has largely been out of favour at Manchester United. England's management consider Aaron Lennon too erratic while Welbeck and Milner are used only sparingly by their own clubs. Johnson made his international debut under Fabio Capello in the 2010 World Cup warm-up match against Mexico but he did not make the final cut and, since then, he has started only four games for England. At City, he was often criticised by Roberto Mancini for not being focused enough, but his recent improvement is timed well from an England perspective and the Denmark game could conceivably give him the chance to win Hodgson's trust, 16 months since the player's last call-up Surely this means a Johnson howler as he will bust a gut and the Hull players will know it so will expect tricks and runs..? Or is he there to watch Wes?
HAHA Brown might very well surprise him, he might be thinking "who is this guy at the back and is he English????" I expect Johnson to play well, it makes no difference if Hodgson is there on not, he probably watches all the clips from the games anyway so AJ just needs to go out and do his thing.
He's planning on coming here to watch huddlestone Johnson just happens to be playing in the same game
Source? Will be there for Johnson/Huddlestone, but a good chance for Jack to impress Maybe he's gonna beg Wes to come out of retirement
Doubt he'd come all the way to Sunderland to watch a player for the away team mate. A chance to view both, but if he's there it will be for Johnson primarily
Well one reason for his uptake in form is probably because the WC is in the summer, so I'd like to think knowing Woy is watching (for his specifically) will be a major motivator for him
Over to you Johnno. Do you want to go to Brazil or not. A good performance on Saturday and you will get a chance in the next England squad to stake a claim and thats all you can ask for. As a club, we are now seeing the player we all thought we had bought last season and it can only aid our chances to get Borini and Ki permanently if we can be seen as a club that can provide International recognition to its players. It will also not go unnoticed by any potential signings in the summer too.
Two months ago Adam Johnson acknowledged that he had "totally given up on" the idea of travelling to Brazil this summer as part of England's World Cup squad. It seemed far from a case of false modesty. After all, only one month ago the winger found himself struggling to secure a regular starting place in Sunderland's first team as he strove to persuade Gus Poyet he could be trusted. If seven goals in the last seven games helped win his club's manager over, the quality of his performances in the past four weeks have also jogged Roy Hodgson's memory. "I'd given up on the World Cup but now I'm not so sure," said Johnson in the wake of Sunderland's 3-0 win at Newcastle last Saturday. A clear beneficiary of Poyet's possession-based passing philosophy, he looks supremely comfortable on the right hand side of the midfield quartet in the Uruguayan's hallmark 4-1-4-1 formation. It helps his cause that, under Poyet, Sunderland no longer sit deep and hope to undo opponents on the counterattack – their key tactic under Martin O'Neill, the manager who brought Johnson back to his native Wearside from Manchester City for £10m in the summer of 2012. "Gus Poyet likes his team playing higher up the pitch and he likes to get attacking players on the ball," said the 26-year-old. "That system suits wingers better. A lot of the time in the past I had to run 70 yards with the ball just to get into a dangerous position. Now I'm much fresher." Very much the crowd's whipping boy under O'Neill and then, after a brief renaissance, Paolo Di Canio, Johnson was also arguably a scapegoat. "Too often in the past Adam was given the ball and expected to do everything all on his own," said Poyet. "Jonno needs to play for a team that passes the ball and gives it to him at the right time when he has space to break forward into. He can't just go into any system and just play. We need to understand when we should use Adam and in which areas of the field. "There are plenty of things my team have had to learn and understand in order to take advantage of his ability. Slowly we are getting there. In the last month Johnno has been on another level – and that was the level we were missing." Poyet had worked with Johnson during his days as Dennis Wise's assistant at Leeds where the winger was on loan from Middlesbrough. Such shared history possibly made it easier for the pair to be candid when Sunderland's manager pulled his then £10m underachiever aside for a watershed chat in December. The theme was responsibility, shared responsibility. "We talked," said Poyet. "I explained part of the responsibility for his performances was with Adam and a part of it was the way we played as a team." With both men sticking to their side of the bargain – not to mention Sunderland's squad increasingly grasping and buying into Poyet's purist mantra – a side that had seemed doomed to relegation have reached the Capital One Cup final and harbour strong premier League survival hopes. This revival has featured some wonderful cameos from their primarily left-footed right sider. Against Newcastle there were fine crosses and subtle changes of pace. There was the extremely clever flicked pass between two defenders that prefaced the opening penalty, the predatory turn and finish required to score the second goal and a thrilling dribble beyond three markers before Johnson curled a shot against a post. It recalled the promise of his youth at Middlesbrough where many suspected Johnson's more traditional repertoire of tricks would ultimately see his career eclipse that of his fellow leftie Stewart Downing. Yet with the older, more experienced, stylistically more modern Downing keeping him out of the first team for long periods, Johnson's Teesside induction often proved frustratingly slow. Toughened up by loan stints at Leeds and Watford he eventually established himself in Boro's first XI following Downing's departure to Aston Villa but the step up from the Championship to City following a £7m move four years ago proved tough. The identity crisis that left Johnson unsure whether he was a fluid, flexible winger or a more amorphous, between-the-lines creator, hardly helped. Neither did the endless hours on the bench, or a lively social life. Johnson's fondness for a night out partly precipitated Roberto Mancini's loss of faith in him. Yet the apparent lack of fitness that characterised his first season at Sunderland may have been as much about starting too few games down the years as a reportedly less than uber-professional lifestyle. Meeting Di Canio provoked an epiphany. For all his man-managerial faults, O'Neill's successor turned Johnson into an infinitely fitter, appreciably more disciplined player who lost an impressive amount of body fat after stepping out of what he termed "my comfort zone". His body sorted, Poyet is busy attending to Johnson's brain. Come June, Hodgson could be a big beneficiary.
I was discussing Hull's rotten form the other day with a poster on their board. He seriously blamed Hull's 4-1 thrashing, at Southampton, on the fact that Roy was there watching Adam Lallana I hope he'd whinging again on Saturday night. The good thing about AJ is that he's not doing anything extraordinary,he's just gone back to basics ......... goes forward directly when he has the ball at his feet, tracks back when he hasn't & runs into to space if we're attacking and someone else has the ball. I don't think he's playing out of his skin ..... he's just playing his normal game but with confidence.
I know mate. There was a certain amount of sarcasm in my comment. He went to Southampton at the weekend to watch players he knows when he could've watched us hammer the mags and 3 English players play superbly well in that.
