Arsenal legend Ian Wright admits he's come full circle in his opinion on the England fiasco surrounding Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand.
Wrighty was fully supportive of Ferdinand initially, but is now having second thoughts after his Qatar trip.
He told Absolute Radio: "Now we've got a situation where he's pulled out, all fingers are going to be pointed at Rio. I think that he should've just played. If Manchester United had a midweek game in Montenegro for the Champions League right now would Rio play after playing in the recent games? He most probably would play. So training schedule or not it's one of those that it just makes me feel a little bit like let's get over all that stuff, be the bigger person in respect of I'm going to play for England because I want to play for England.
"If I can help, you don't need to play in the San Marino game, but there's Montenegro game who are top of the league at the moment and if they do win this game then they're going to go even further in front. I think maybe five points, I'm not sure. That's more important than anything else. At least then once he does get to a stage where he says listen I'm going to totally retire from national football, international football, I can't be picked anymore, because my body just can't deal with it. Rather than we're coming up with well I've got a training regime I've got stick to.
"Flying off to Qatar, to comment on his peers who he didn't want to actually like play with at the moment because of his training schedule. It smells, the whole thing stinks really, because at the end of the day England are going to miss out, because we need to qualify, we need the best players. Between Alex Ferguson saying well wait a minute he's got a strict fitness programme that we want him to stick to and England calling up without finding out about this it's annoying for me, it really is annoying. There's a lot of politics going on and at the end of the day Rio will most probably get all the blame for it."
Listen to Ian Wright on Absolute Radio Rock n' Roll Football. Every Saturday on 1215AM from 5pm. For more, visit absoluteradio.co.uk/football.
