Hodgson suspects ankle ligament damage for Carrick

England manager Roy Hodgson fears Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick suffered ankle ligament damage during the closing stages of a 2-0 friendly defeat to Spain.

Carrick went down during the final minute of the match in Alicante and left the field on a stretcher, with Hodgson conceding that the prognosis is worrying.

“It doesn’t look good,” Hodgson said.

“He’s got a severely twisted ankle, which normally means ligament damage. But we won’t know until the X-ray or scan tomorrow.”

Carrick will now be considered a major doubt for United’s next Premier League at Watford a week on Sunday and their forthcoming Champions League meeting with PSV, while Hodgson confirmed that his club team-mate Chris Smalling was also nursing a knock.

The England boss was ultimately disappointed by the manner of defeat to Spain after his team held firm in the face of sustained possession until Mario Gaspar beat Joe Hart with a sensational acrobatic volley in the 72nd minute.

Substitute Santi Cazorla rounded off the scoring six minutes from time.

Hodgson told ITV: “I was a bit disappointed because I thought for 70 minutes we defended very well.

“It was a poor goal to concede on a counter-attack, for us. Things were looking good going forward but gave the ball away and got punished by a fantastic goal.

“We’re losing players in midfield around that time – we’d had to take [Fabian] Delph and [Adam] Lallana off already and then Michael Carrick gets injured.

“We conceded the second goal with Smalling limping, so we didn’t have the best of luck in those areas.

“We played against a very good team – we knew that. The game was pretty much as well expected and for 70 minutes I felt we held our own pretty well and, in fact, we were getting back into the game possession-wise when they scored.

“I can’t say we deserved to win the game – they were the better team and deserved to win it.”