Andre Villas-Boas confessed that it was fears over Kyle Walker's hamstring that prompted his substitution in Tottenham's loss yesterday to Manchester City and Walker's withdrawal from England's friendly squad.
Walker left the pitch for Michael Dawson during Tottenham's 2-1 defeat at City, and is now one of five people, the others being Wayne Rooney with an injury to his ankle, Jonjo Shelvey, Aaron Lennon and Theo Walcott, to have ruled themselves out of England's friendly on Wednesday with Sweden. Others will also be missing due to injury.
The Tottenham manager felt they had to avoid the risk of Walker being sidelined for a lengthy spell after the Spurs man started to feel a tightening of the hamstring.
Villas-Boas explained: "It was an injury situation as he felt his hamstring was tight. We didn't want to risk losing him for three or four weeks. We held on for a couple of minutes when he gave us the sign but we took him off."
Villas-Boas has admitted how Spurs found it difficult yesterday. He said to Sky Sports: "The plan before the game was to try and hold onto the ball a bit more, to have more possession and try to connect up and link the wingers. It was difficult because Manchester City's line was very high and they pushed us very well, so it was difficult to make that second pass in the link up play."
Tottenham lost yesterday despite going 1-0 up, with Manchester City managing to equalise with a Sergio Aguero goal, before Edin Dzeko scored the winning goal for the home team.
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