England ran out comfortable 3-0 winners against Australia at Pride Park, however the friendly was marred by a ‘horrible’ injury to Lionesses striker Michelle Agyemang.
Agyemang, who played a starring role in England’s triumph on the Euros in the summertime, got here on as a second-half substitute for Alessia Russo but went down off the ball clutching her knee just 11 minutes later.
After receiving lengthy treatment on the pitch, the Arsenal striker, who’s spending her second season on loan at Brighton, appeared in agony as she left the pitch on a stretcher.
And England boss Sarina Wiegman gave a fearful update at full-time, telling ITV: ‘I haven’t been inside yet but that looked horrible.
‘When you find yourself stretchered off, it’s not nice anyway, and it doesn’t look good. In fact, it’s not confirmed, however it looks bad.’
Asked again in regards to the injury in her post-match press conference, Wiegman added: ‘It was an awful moment. It doesn’t look good, and naturally, we don’t know yet because she first must be assessed, but I’m not very positive about what I’ve seen.’
The unlucky injury to Agyemang sadly overshadowed what was an otherwise positive night for a new-look England side that featured debutants Lucia Kendall and Taylor Hinds.
Given a rare probability to begin, Aggie Beever-Jones continued her impressive begin to the season when she opened the scoring just moments after Australia were reduced to 10 players.
Alanna Kennedy was given her marching orders for denying Alessia Russo a goalscoring opportunity, with Beever-Jones smashing home on the second attempt from the resulting free-kick.
Lucy Bronze, who arrange the opener, then got on the scoresheet herself shortly before the break, stroking Ella Toone’s cross past Mackenzie Arnold and into the underside corner.
And the Lionesses added a 3rd when Georgia Stanway scored a late second-half penalty after Katrina Gorry brought down Missy Bo Kearns contained in the penalty area.
Asked about her side’s performance at full-time, Wiegman noted: ‘In fact, we desired to dominate the sport and early in the sport, a player was sent off for them they usually go all the way down to 10.
‘We had a lesson the opposite day on the right way to do it against 10, so we desired to sustain the pace of the sport, create probabilities and harm them.
‘I believe we were OK on the ball but we are able to do higher, especially in the ultimate third, be tighter on the ball, be aligned a bit more, make higher decisions, then we could’ve scored a bit bit more.
‘Overall, we were solid after we didn’t have the ball, I believed.’
England are back in motion next month once they face friendlies against China and Ghana.
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