Steven Gerrard, the England captain, says Wayne Rooney "looks good" and is ready to play a big role in tonight's friendly against Scotland.
Rooney, linked with a move away from Manchester United this summer and the subject of two bids from Chelsea, has been struggling with hamstring and shoulder injuries that have ruled him out of most of his club's pre-season programme.
The striker's situation did not prevent England manager Roy Hodgson from calling him into his squad for the match at Wembley, and Gerrard has no doubts the United man can make an impact if given a chance.
"He's certainly not match-fit because he's not played in any friendly games throughout the summer, but it's the same old Wayne Rooney in training. He looks good and he's scoring goals," Gerrard said.
"He's certainly ready to play; he's prepared really well. He needs these minutes for his own personal fitness and I'm sure he's itching to start."
Tonight's meeting with Scotland comes just days before the start of the new Barclays Premier League season, and Gerrard views the contest as the perfect curtain-raiser, as well a key warm-up ahead of World Cup qualifiers with Moldova and Ukraine next month.
"It's a World Cup year and we've got four very important World Cup qualifiers not too far away," said Gerrard. "We've got a big game against our local rivals, so it's going off with a bang. All the players are excited and looking forward to an exciting year.
"We're expecting a quick start and a high-tempo game. They're going to be well up for the game. They want to beat England, we want to beat Scotland. We play against these guys week-in, week-out, so it's a good test for us. Going into the important games in a couple of weeks' time it's important we go in feeling confident and on the back of a good performance."
With the match scheduled so close to the new season, there will be concerns about players collecting injuries, but Gerrard says clubs cannot start attempting to limit the amount of time their players spend on the pitch. "The Premier League managers have got to understand we're here representing our country, it's a big game, and we all want to play as many minutes as possible," he said. "There'll be no holding back because it's a big game and we want to win."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article