Very Specific Question No.11: How is Jay Bothroyd going to get back into the England squad?

Ten games, 30 points. England’s perfect record in European Championships qualifying was only exceeded in its efficiency by its tedium. But now that insufferable win-fest is out of the way, attentions can turn to Euro 2016 itself, and specifically to who will make Roy Hodgson’s final 23-man squad.

While several fringe players were given the chance to impress against Lithuania on Monday night, there was one England international conspicuous by his absence. A goalscorer once heralded as the future of English football, and still banging them in for his club at a Cristiano Ronaldo-esque rate. That man is Jay Bothroyd.

Actually, to backtrack slightly, Bothroyd’s absence wasn’t conspicuous. On the contrary, even if the striker had entered the LFF Stadium in Vilnius and walked across the pitch in full England kit, the majority of spectators wouldn’t have recognised him, and he would probably have been wrestled to the ground by police as a suspected hooligan.

And yet, a mere five years ago the same player was pulling on a shirt adorned with the hallowed Three Lions and taking the field against France at Wembley. It’s an event that at the time was surprising, and now seems so far-fetched that even those who remember it dismiss it as a hallucination; a trick of the mind. Yet it really happened.

A decade into a career that had been synonymous with mediocrity since the moment he made his professional debut for a mediocre Coventry City side and produced a mediocre goals return, something wonderful happened to Bothroyd in 2010.

Having hitherto scored 61 goals in 275 games throughout his football existence, the Islington-born striker scored 15 times in the first 16 games of the 2010/11 season for Cardiff City. It was only in the Championship so it shouldn’t have really mattered, but injuries to Wayne Rooney, Darren Bent, Jermain Defoe and Bobby Zamora meant England manager Fabio Capello was staying up an hour later on Saturday nights to watch the Football League Show on BBC One. And although he found Manish Bhasin’s presenting style clunky and wooden, he was much more impressed by Bothroyd and called up England’s hottest striker for the friendly against Les Bleus.

At the ripe old age of 28, Bothroyd triumphantly made his international bow in the 2-1 defeat by Laurent Blanc’s men. He ran around, he kicked the ball, he headed it. But that was as good as it got.

Bothroyd scored twice in his next 15 games for Cardiff, and just five more times that season. He followed this with medicore spells at Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield Wednesday and Thailand’s Muangthong United, none of which inspired Capello or Hodgson to select him again.

But this story is not yet over. Bothroyd subsequently moved to Japan, where he has rediscovered the long-lost goalscoring touch from that crazy autumn of 2010. The 33-year-old has netted 17 goals in 27 league games for Jubilo Awata this season, a strike rate just fractionally less deadly than Ronaldo’s five in seven for Real Madrid. Admittedly, the standard of defending in J League 2 is not as strong as in La Liga, but nor was it in the Championship.

Meanwhile, England have issues up front. Wayne Rooney will be expected to lead the line, despite not being able to score goals, while Harry Kane will be his back-up, despite not being able to score goals. Daniel Sturridge needs to prove his fitness and Theo Walcott needs to prove he’s a striker, while Jamie Vardy, Danny Ings, Saido Berahino and Danny Welbeck are unlikely to terrify Europe’s top defences.

There is still an opening for a maverick centre-forward. A striker in form. An English Roger Milla, if you will. Jay Bothroyd’s time could yet come again, especially if the BBC give Manish Bhasin a new highlights programme featuring the best of the week’s Japanese lower league football.

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