Roy Hodgson yesterday stood by a foul-mouthed outburst to journalists made in the wake of England’s limp 1-0 win over Norway.

At a post-match press conference on Wednesday night one reporter pointed out that England had registered just two shots on target.

“Don’t give me that,” snapped the normally calm manager as he maintained that England had played well.

Asked about his prickly demeanour, Hodgson went on: “I am entitled to be (unhappy) when I get questions about only having two shots on target.

“You have just seen an England team dominate for 45 minutes against a good opponent, an opponent that’s hard to beat and you have seen them work very hard to create chances,” he said.

“There was a lot of euphoria before the World Cup. We were getting 75,000 people to see us play Peru, who, with respect, were nowhere near as difficult an opponent as Norway. And now we have 40,000.

“I can’t put that right because I can’t turn the clock back, but what I can do is analyse what I have seen and judge that through my eyes, and not judge it because someone is going to tell me: ‘Well, you only had two shots at goal’ because for me, that is absolute fucking bullshit, I’m sorry.”

England face Switzerland on Monday in the first of their Euro 2016 qualifiers.

Hodgson faces a further headache in his team selection after Daniel Sturridge suffered a knock in training yesterday that could see him added to the long injury list.

Theo Walcott, Adam Lallana, Ross Barkley, Michael Carrick, Jay Rodriguez and Andy Carroll are all out of contention up front, while Kyle Walker, Glen Johnson, Luke Shaw, Jon Flanagan, Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs are also unavailable.

That’s compounded by recent international retirements Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole.