DARREN Bent is confident his glaring miss will not see him dropped from the England side, despite it denying them a crucial victory over Switzerland.
Aston Villa striker Bent blazed over the crossbar with the goal gaping as England drew 2-2 to open the door for Montenegro to overtake them in European Championship qualifying Group G.
The 27-year-old also failed to score when put through one on one but he revealed that manager Fabio Capello had reassured him about the misses.
Bent said: ‘‘Fabio said, ‘Don’t worry about it’.
‘‘I’m a striker, all strikers miss chances and I’m sure when the next one comes along I’ll bury it.
‘‘As a striker, you practise taking chances and, obviously, today it wasn’t meant to be.
‘‘But we move on from that, take the positives from the game.
‘‘I thought our second-half performance was good and we’ll move on to the next international.’’ Saturday’s game was Bent’s third start in the last four internationals.
He added: ‘‘It’s gone really well. Fabio’s shown real faith in me this season and I thank him for that.
‘‘He’s played me again for another 90, which hasn’t happened in the past, and I’m over the moon about it.
‘‘All I can do is keep doing well for my club side, which I’ve done this season, and get a good rest under my belt. It’s been a long old season.’’ England were forced to fight back from 2-0 at Wembley.
‘‘Unfortunately, we got out of the blocks slowly and it was one point instead of all three,’’ said Bent, who felt tiredness played a part after a long season.
‘‘Some of the guys played Champions League football.
‘‘It’s a lot of games to play in a season.
‘‘I wouldn’t say it’s an excuse but people do get tired.’’ Captain John Terry insists England have the know-how and experience required to emerge from their dip and qualify for Euro 2012.
Capello’s side dropped points for a second successive home qualifying match when they drew with Switzerland.
They only head their group on goal difference from Montenegro, the team they visit for the final qualifier on October 7.
Terry said: “We still have to go to Montenegro, which is looking like a crucial game at the moment.
“We’re hoping others can do us a favour but, whatever happens from now until the end, it’s still in our hands.
“We always seem to leave ourselves with an uphill task and always make it interesting!
“We always make it difficult for ourselves so we’ve certainly got the experience to deal with that.
“Ideally, we’d like to be in a better position than we are now but we can still qualify as top of the group.”
Central defender Terry admits England were disappointed at gifting Switzerland two goals from free-kicks, with manager Capello far from happy with their first-half performance.
Terry said: “We were disappointed in the manner that we conceded the two goals.
“We’d looked at videos, we felt they were a small side and we could have gone down the other end and scored a couple in their box.
“That was disappointing and against any side, if you give away two goals, give someone a head start, then you know it’s always going to be tough.
“We had the chances, especially in the second half. In the first half it didn’t feel like we got out of the blocks.
“The tempo and passing was slow. In the first ten minutes we got behind them a bit, turned them round a bit, but after that we kept the ball in our own half too much.
“The manager just told us to regroup at half-time. He said he didn’t recognise the team in the first half.”
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