Andriy Shevchenko is set to prove why Chelsea signed him before, according to John Terry. Frank Lamard also believes that this game has been “tailor-made” for his club team-mate, currently on loan at AC Milan.
Ukraine visit Wembley a daunting five points adrift of Fabio Capello’s Group Six pacesetters but with a game in hand that makes the outcome of Wednesday’s encounter all the more pivotal to the group’s final standings.
The visitors will be captained by a man in Shevchenko who arrived in West London for a fee in the region of £30 million but made only a minimal impact before returning to Milan. However, Lampard, who played alongside the former Dynamo Kiev striker at Stamford Bridge, fears that England would be not be wise to write him off.
“Andrei Shevchenko has been a fantastic player and is now – he’ll be a big threat to us on Wednesday because he’s a top player who can produce something out of the blue,” he said at a Monday press conference. I don’t know why it didn’t work [at Chelsea] for him, he had a lot of injuries and was in and out of the team. Players like Sheva, these are the kind of games he’ll really want to do well in and has that ability to do something in. When you hear the name Shevchenko you understand he’s going to be a threat. He’s someone we’ll certainly have to watch very closely.”
With a 100 percent qualifying record behind them and a 4-0 win over Slovakia still fresh in the mind, Lampard has warned that he and his international compatriots should still not take their visitors lightly.
Lampard added: “I’m sure Ukraine will be stronger [than Slovakia] and will come here to get points”. There’ll be more of an edge to them and the main thing will be to win the game. If we can get a result on Wednesday and then you look at the two games in the summer, we can really put ourselves in a strong position going into the last few games. We know hard it is fighting from behind to qualify so if we can get that lead it doesn’t matter what teams are behind us.”
Shevchenko has only started 2 games this year, but will no doubt be a threat alongside fellow forgotten man (from Liverpool, now at Hertha Berlin on loan) Andreiy Voronin.
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