Shropshire Star

Nobbs: Celebration with Sampson ‘natural’ for ‘together’ England Women team

The Lionesses showed public support for their under-pressure boss Mark Sampson.

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Jordan Nobbs defended the England Women’s team right to celebrate with manager Mark Sampson during their six-goal drubbing of Russia.

The Lionesses faced heavy criticism from former team-mates Eni Aluko and Lianne Sanderson for rushing towards Sampson when Nikita Parris opened the scoring at Prenton Park on Tuesday evening.

The 11th-minute strike from Parris set England on course for a 6-0 win in their opening World Cup qualifying match, against supposedly the second strongest side in their group.

Aluko felt the message sent out by the exuberance showed “a level of disrespect that represents division and selfish action”, given it followed her accusations of racism, harassment and bullying against Sampson.

Sampson has been cleared twice, by a Football Association review and an independent investigation, and he firmly denies any wrongdoing. Anti-racism campaigners Kick It Out and the Professional Footballers’ Association have both called for a fresh assessment of evidence.

The saga overshadowed the build-up to the Russia game, so it came as a relief to Nobbs that England should perform so well. She scored the third goal and was named player of the match.

Nobbs said: “It has been a tough time for all of us, but what we’ve been doing over the last few years since Mark’s been with the squad is we’ve been developing a together team and hard-working team. Getting to two semi-finals of major tournaments, it doesn’t just come out of the blue.”

England are coming off a semi-final showing at Euro 2017, having finished third at the 2015 World Cup, and Nobbs feels England should be able to focus on their on-pitch performance.

“We can’t comment on the unknown, but as a team and personally as a player Mark has been an incredible manager and person to me, so I can only talk on my experience,” Nobbs said.

“For the girls to put in a 6-0 performance I think it shows how hard we want to work.”

Assessing the celebration of the first goal, Nobbs added: “Like ‘Keets’ (Parris) said, it came natural and we wanted to celebrate and perform as a team and we did exactly that.”

Sanderson, who is backing her fellow former England striker Aluko, was scathing of England’s celebration with Sampson and wrote on Twitter: “I’m actually lost for words and feel physically sickened by all of this. They successfully manipulated the players into a them against us”

Such rhetoric contrasts sharply with talk from within the England camp, and the likes of vice-captain Nobbs have given no indication of wavering support for Sampson.

Despite the emphatic win on the Wirral, Nobbs said England are likely to remain haunted by their 3-0 semi-final defeat to Holland at Euro 2017 for some time to come.

She said: “I don’t think we can just forget about that. I think it’ll live with us for a little bit.

“But as players you have to accept that that’s football, and you’re going to win some, you’re going to lose some, and for us to put on a good performance (against Russia) showed that our main goal now is the World Cup. Our performance was brilliant and a team togetherness showed all over the pitch.”

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