Rooney leads England rout

England 5 San Marino 0

Stand-in skipper Rooney took his tally for his country to 31 with his two goals while Danny Welbeck also netted twice before Alex-Oxlade Chamberlain completed the rout on 77 minutes with his first senior international goal.

Rooney described his pride in his achievement and said: “To be in the England top five is something to be proud of. I am only 26 so hopefully I will score a lot more.

“We created some good chances and maybe there was a bit of poor finishing but it’s not that easy when they put 10 or 11 men behind the ball.

“It’s difficult to break them down and we had to create chances and we managed to do that, so obviously we’ll take the positives and it wasn’t a bad result.”

The hosts were two up after 37 minutes when first Rooney netted from the spot after Welbeck was upended by the goalkeeper Aldo Simoncini and then Welbeck got on the scoresheet within 90 seconds when he did well to turn in Aaron Lennon’s cross and from there on it was simply a case of how many.

Welbeck said: “I want to score a goal in every game and this was my first of the season, but I’ve been playing in different positions and it’s all good experience for me, so I’m definitely happy.”

The night was soured somewhat from an England point of view after Arsenal’s Theo Walcott had to go off after just 10 minutes following a heavy challenge by San Marino goalkeeper Simoncini.

Hodgson said: “It was a very bad challenge and he’s in hospital and will stay in hospital overnight.

“He’s having scans and tests and we can only hope it isn’t too bad, but it was a very poor challenge and we should have been up after three minutes with a penalty.

“It’s never easy when 10 players are parked in the penalty area but I was very pleased with the way we kept playing football from the first minute to the very last.

“Five goals is a good result and there was a good result also for us in Moldova (they drew 0-0 with Ukraine), so it’s been a very satisfying week’s work.”

ENGLAND: Hart; Walker, Jagielka, Cahill, Baines; Walcott (Lennon 10’), Carrick (Shelvey 66’), Cleverley, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Rooney (Carroll 76’),Welbeck.

SAN MARINO: Simoncini; Vitaioli, Simoncini, Brolli, Palazzi; Cibelli, Coppini (Buscarini 75’),Rinaldi, Della Valle; Gasperoni, Cervellini.

Referee: Gediminas Mazeika (LTU).