Barry's double helping

It was Gareth Barry’s first England start for nearly seven years against Israel on Saturday and the Villa man had a hand in two of the Three Lions’ goals as they swept past the visitors in comfortable style.

Playing in the centre of midfield alongside Steven Gerrard, Barry showed so good moments on the ball and was happy with his performance in what was his eleventh international cap.

However, the 26-year-old says that victory was the most important thing as England moved to within one point of Russia, who are second in Group E and who are the next opponents for Steve McClaren’s men on Wednesday.

“The result was the main thing and a 3-0 win anywhere is a positive result,” Barry told TheFA.com. “I was delighted to play the 90 minutes, and come back with a positive result.

“It was nice to play in their with Stevie G, playing alongside someone like that helps you in itself. To get a lot of the ball as we did, I thought I would do in a game like this at home against Israel, but I thought it went pretty well.

“It was important that we set the tempo early and that’s what we done. We took the game to them, we’re at home, and it was nice to get a goal relatively early to relax the nerves a bit.

For both second half goals, Barry was the provider. On the 49th minute, with the ball at his feet inside Israel’s half, he waited for the right moment before playing a crisp pass into the feet of Michael Owen. He swivelled on the edge of the box before firing beyond Aouate into the top of the net.

Micah Richards rounded of the scoring in the 66th minute leaping to meet Barry’s inswinging corner from the right and score his first ever England goal.

Barry added: “We’ve been working on set-pieces through the week, so I put a few over, so It was nice for Micah to get on a get his first goal as well, so it was a good end to the game.”

“Three points was always the main aim today. Looking at Russia now, we’ll take the confidence of the game into it because we know they are a good team.”