England Train For Ghana Friendly, Darth Capello Stares Down Gareth Barry (Photos)

Chris Wright

29th, March 2011

6 Comments

By Chris Wright

“Good, use your aggressive feelings boy. Let the hate flow through you…”

Afore their friendly against Ghana this evening, Fabio Capello put his England squad (or should that be ‘England B squad’?) through their paces in an open training session at Wembley yesterday afternoon.

There are a few nuggets of news pertaining to the game that you may or may not be interested to know:

1. In the absence of John Terry, Frank Lampard et al, Gareth Barry will captain England against the Black Stars tonight.

2. Danny Welbeck has been called up to the full squad for the first time, as a late replacement for Aaron Lennon who suffered a twinge in his hamstring yesterday.

3. Capello has told Andy Carroll – a full-blown Geordie gentleman – that he should ‘drink less beer’ if he really wants to excel for the national side.

4. Carroll, Phil Jagielka, Leighton Baines and Jack Wilshere are all dead certs to start, though Scott Parker will be used sparingly after West Ham voiced their concerns over him playing two full games in a row.

5. Ghana are bringing with them the biggest travelling allocation of fans for a friendly game that Wembley has ever seen – a whopping 21,000 – one of which we dearly hope will be ‘sulky chap with giant steaming pot on head’.

With all that bull-honky out of the way, here’s some more lovely photos for you to enjoy…

The England squad pose for a photo before training gets underway

Scott Carson and Matt Jarvis emerge from the tunnel

Jack Wilshere warms up with a spot of stretching

Scotty Parker gives his favourite jodhpurs another airing

Andy Carroll catches sight of the pitch-side bar

Leighton Baines looks to the sky as tactical gubbins is dished out

Cheer up chaps!

Fabio Capello lands a few ‘Cossack Keepy-Uppies’…

…then clambers onto Andy Carroll’s shoulders to have a word with Peter Crouch

Photos courtesy of the PA.

UPDATE: Apparently there was a bit of a formatting issue with this post earlier on (several photos missing, text too small to read) that wasn’t showing up on my version of the article for some reason.

Hopefully it’s fixed now. If not, give me a nudge in the comments box below.