England head coach Sarina Wiegman has revealed that Chloe Kelly and Fran Kirby will not be available for selection when her side face Switzerland in an international friendly on Tuesday evening.
The Lionesses take on next summer’s UEFA Women’s EURO hosts at Bramall Lane in Sheffield.
When speaking to the media ahead of the match, Wiegman confirmed that Kelly and Kirby are injured and will therefore return to their clubs to begin the recovery process.
“Overall, the squad is good but unfortunately, we have two injuries,” Wiegman said. “Chloe Kelly and Fran Kirby will not be available. We have 23 players that are available with one [training] session to go.
“Both injuries were picked up in the game [against the USA]. Chloe had a knock and is following concussion protocol and unfortunately, Fran picked up a calf injury.”
England held the United States to a goalless draw in their latest international friendly on Saturday evening. Wiegman sees the Switzerland game as another opportunity to try out new things and field some different players.
She said “We will rotate a lot, we will change. It’s another moment. As we have said all of the time, we play four friendlies in October and in November. It gives us opportunities to try out things and to play many players. We need this game too to try out many things, so it’s an opportunity.
“We still have seven months to go [until the EUROs] but we want to get as much information as possible, develop our style of play and see where we are at.”
After finding it difficult to create chances against the United States at the weekend, Wiegman is expecting her side to have more dominance against Switzerland in Sheffield.
She said “Tomorrow will be a different game with different challenges. I expect that Switzerland will play in another shape and from what we have seen, they drop deeper a little bit quicker, so we expect to have the ball more.
“From the USA game, in the second half for about 20 minutes, we had momentum and kept the ball but we want to do that for longer. Ideally, we want to dominate for 90 minutes rather than 20 minutes. It’s hard in the big occasions but we want to get more out of that.
“At moments, we defended well as a team but it’s about trying to win the ball a little higher on the pitch, that’s something that we would like to do too.”
England’s international friendly against Switzerland kicks-off at 7.45pm on Tuesday evening. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
