Friday 3 June 2016 06:33, UK
England can make it to the semi-finals of Euro 2016 if they gain the right momentum, says former caretaker manager Peter Taylor.
Roy Hodgson's men narrowly beat Portugal in a fairly drab affair at Wembley, with Chris Smalling's header sealing the 1-0 win as the visitors played just under an hour with ten men after Bruno Alves' red card.
But Taylor remained upbeat about England's chances in the upcoming tournament in France, where they play Russia on June 11 in Group B.
"I think we're a good team. It's all about that first match. If we can win our first match and build momentum we can go from there," Taylor said after commentating on the game for Sky Sports News HQ.
"I think we can go a long, long way - and I'm talking about the semi-finals. And once you get to the semi-finals anything can happen because you're a confident bunch.
"The nice thing about England is they've got a good habit of winning matches. They haven't played great tonight but they've won a match again, from a good goal, and there was still some good things. And it doesn't look like there were any injuries - so that's another positive."
Hodgson has experimented with formations in the warm-up games, and played the majority of the Wembley match-up with a diamond formation before switching to a 4-3-3 late on.
Despite a lacklusture performance, Taylor thought the formation worked on the night and has identified the players he believes are certain to start in France.
"I thought the formation was good. It was a diamond shape but the difference is [Eric] Dier goes in between the centre-backs, the full-backs push on and it's a 3-5-2, which gives us two targets for the strikers and gives us great width, which helps.
"Dele Alli can play anywhere, top of the diamond, to the left, to the right, even alongside Dier as he did at the start of the season with Tottenham. Alli's a cert, [Harry] Kane's a cert, [Wayne] Rooney's a cert - I'm not sure [Jamie] Vardy is a cert at the moment.
"The things that are going to make Roy really think are Wilshere looked nice and fit when he came on, started beating people again. We have another nine days and I think he may try to get Wilshere into the team. Maybe Henderson for Milner if he doesn't go the Wilshere route.
"It wouldn't surprise me if that was Hodgson's back four. A lot of our defending started from the front and I think that affected our performance - Kane works hard getting back, Vardy works hard, we then get the ball and have no targets. It still makes us solid and they didn't test us much."
