{{Ashley Cole will miss England’s World Cup qualifying match against Moldova on Friday because of an ankle injury.}}<\/p>\n
The Chelsea left-back, 31, returned to his club shortly after joining up with Roy Hodgson’s squad.<\/p>\n
The injury is described as “minor”, and he will be assessed on Sunday over his availability for the qualifier against Ukraine on Tuesday, 11 September.<\/p>\n
Striker Andy Carroll has already withdrawn from the squad with a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old striker, who joined West Ham on a season-long loan on Friday, withdrew from the squad on Saturday after picking up a hamstring injury in the 3-0 win over Fulham.<\/p>\n
Hodgson, who was at St Mary’s as Manchester United came from behind to beat Southampton 3-2 on Sunday, waited until the weekend’s Premier League programme had concluded before deciding not to replace Carroll.<\/p>\n
Arsenal’s Theo Walcott, who has been named as a midfielder, is likely to provide cover.<\/p>\n
Leighton Baines started England’s 2-1 win over Itay in August at left-back, where he was replaced with 12 minutes remaining by Chelsea’s Ryan Bertrand, also in the squad for Moldova and Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Had Cole played in both matches, he would have won his 100th cap against Ukraine, having made his debut against Albania in March 2001.<\/p>\n
England’s road to Brazil 2014 begins at the Zimbru Stadium in Chisnau before Hodgson’s men face Ukraine four days later at Wembley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Ashley Cole will miss England’s World Cup qualifying match against Moldova on Friday because of an ankle injury.}} The Chelsea left-back, 31, returned to his club shortly after joining up with Roy Hodgson’s squad. The injury is described as “minor”, and he will be assessed on Sunday over his availability for the qualifier against Ukraine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3057"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3057"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}