Rio is slicker than Jagielka, but I'd stall on replacing Stevie G

By Mark Lawrenson

Published 23:00 08/10/10

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Rio Ferdinand’s England place is being questioned, but if he’s fit he should play. And there’s no doubt about it.

Everton boss David Moyes was pushing for Phil Jagielka to partner John Terry before his centre-back was injured, and you can understand why. Jagielka has done extremely well.

But a fit Ferdinand would always be my choice over a fit Phil Jagielka because Rio is the better player.

True, Ferdinand’s injury record over the last 12 months isn’t good. What he needs now is to play consecutive games to show he is fully fit and up to the rigours of three games a week at the top level.

Should he be captain on Tuesday? No. I’d leave the captaincy with Steven Gerrard, who’s done a marvellous job since being given the armband. The captaincy will sort itself out and Rio just needs to go forward with his game and prove his fitness.

I’m not saying Fabio Capello should come out and make Gerrard the skipper permanently, although Sir Alex Ferguson has already taken the armband away from Ferdinand at Manchester United.

The England coach doesn’t have to make any decision like that now. All he needs to do is say Gerrard will carry on as captain on Tuesday and leave it at that.

He doesn’t have to say anything else and risk making it a big talking point, like it was when John Terry lost the job.

Capello caused a few raised eyebrows when he handed Kevin Davies his first England call-up at 33 and there were many people calling for Andy Carroll to be included. I know the critics have questioned what this says about Capello’s policy of giving youth a chance, when he’s gone for a 33-year-old over a 21-year-old?

But Capello has made the right call. It’s too early to judge Carroll. The guy is still young and very inexperienced at Premier League level.

He played a few games the season Newcastle went down and the first few of this season, but that’s not enough at the top level to say he’s ready for England.

He needs to be given more time to settle in. Yes, he’s made a good start to the season, but it was interesting to hear Toon boss Chris Hughton explain he had left him out last Sunday because his performance level had dropped. I don’t know why it is in this country, but we seem obsessed about making snap judgements on people. If they do well in a couple of games, they are the next best thing and should play for England. And if they play badly, they are a waste of money and should be dropped.

Capello knows all about Davies, who has been doing it season after season in the Premier League. He picked the Bolton striker because he wanted to tick the box of having a target man and he turned to him when Emile Heskey refused to come out of ­international ­retirement.

If Davies plays against Montenegro, it could prove to be his one and only cap and you would expect Jermain Defoe to return to the team when he is fit. But I don’t think Davies will care because he will have got one cap more than he expected and he can say he played for England.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter what team Capello puts out at Wembley on Tuesday and it should be another three points.

I was in Switzerland and I was very impressed with the way they played. They could have been 5-0 up at half-time and played some great stuff.

I was particularly impressed by Manchester City’s Adam Johnson and he looks extremely capable of playing at that level.

His club boss Roberto Mancini was maybe being a little bit harsh when he had a go at him and told him to keep working hard because he’s only been in the game for five minutes.

I don’t know if he needed to say that, and Johnson looks a real star to me.

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