McClaren Blames Loss On Absentees

Mr England football coach Steve McClaren attributed his side's home defeat to Spain to the absence of several key players.

"It was always going to be a tough game with all the players we had missing but I learned quite a bit about a few that came back," said McClaren. "We were missing half a squad. We were without the likes of Owen Hargreaves, Wayne Rooney and John Terry - they're big players that can win you big games. We don't like to lose but the key is building towards the game with Israel."

Third in Euro 2008 qualifying group E, England play Israel away on 24 March.

"It's very difficult in a friendly when you have to make changes," added McClaren. "I was really looking at individuals and how they adapt. But it is difficult to get any cohesion you could see that. I thought Ben Foster did well, Jonathan Woodgate and Rio Ferdinand were very good at the back, and I was very pleased with Kieron Dyer, he tried to make things happen."

And McClaren pinpointed his side's lack of cutting edge in attacking areas as key to his side's failure.

"We created opportunities but just lacked that final bit of quality."

Like his manager, skipper Steven Gerrard praised the contribution of Woodgate and Dyer, but said the team could not hide behind the list of absentees.

"Jonathan was superb and it was great to see Kieron in an England shirt again," he said. "Injuries are always disruptive but we don't want to make excuses, we should have played better. We started very well. For the first 15 minutes we were on top, but we didn't score and it's always difficult if you don't score when you're on top. If we'd scored that would have given us a real confidence boost."

Gerrard, who has now lost both games in which he has captained his country, bemoaned England's failure to gain some confidence before March's testing trip to Israel.

But the Liverpool man remained upbeat about the squad's chances of winning that vital game before travelling to Spain to play Andorra in Barcelona.

"We're looking forward to those qualifiers," he added. "We'll be confident we can get two good results. We want two massive perfomances and I'm confident we can produce."treppedis