Uruguay v England: Rooney to prove his worth in favoured role

England simply must beat Uruguay to keep qualification in their own hands and while Three Lions fans’ nerves are jangling history suggests Roy’s boys should do the business against the South Americans.

Being a European nation England play an admittedly limited amount of football against South American opponents but a look back at the last 20 games shows that we have rarely struggled against the likes of Uruguay.

In the last 20 games against sides from South America England have lost just three, drawn five and won 12 times including against Brazil, Argentina and indeed Uruguay.

True, most of these games have been of the friendly variety but England’s World Cup record against South Americans also provides encouraging reading with three wins, one draw and just one defeat – to Brazil.

So with the stats suggesting reasons to be confident here are three solid bets for the crunch game.

Wayne Rooney to score first @ 6/1

Wazza’s form has been the source of much debate and having never scored a goal at a World Cup finals this one is a bit of a Gut Truster pick.

However, the Manchester United man is England’s all-time leading World Cup goal scorer when qualification games are included and after being restored to his favoured central position has never had a better opportunity to shine.

We’re backing Wayne to fire us to glory and at 6/1 to open the scoring you should too!

Over 2.5 goals to be scored @ 21/20

England will concede, they always do, so any win is likely to need at least two goals from the Three Lions, especially with Luis Suarez likely to be restored to Uruguay’s starting XI.

Games involving England and South American rivals are often high-scoring affairs with 20 goals recorded in the last six meetings and an average of 2.85 over the last 20 games.

England to win 2-1 @ 9/1

Just six of the last 20 games where England have played a team from South America have seen any side record a victory by more than one goal.

So, if you’re backing Uruguay to score – and you should be as they’ve netted in 19 of their last 19 fixtures – then 2-1 looks the most likely result if England are to win, making 9/1 simply too good to turn down.

Come on England!

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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