England boss Gareth Southgate has reacted to Marcus Rashford spending the international break in New York after withdrawing from England duty through injury.

Rashford pulled out of England’s two European Championship qualifiers against Italy and Ukraine due to a toe injury.

“Once Marcus is ruled out of the squad, it’s entirely up to him how he spends his time,” Southgate insisted.

“The players don’t get a lot of breaks and I’m sure some of them will be flying off after tomorrow’s game if they get 48 hours off with the schedule as it is.

“We are always linking with clubs on scans and assessments.

“There is also how every individual player feels, so there is a lot involved.

“I am always working with the players on what the best solution is for them.

“Of course, we always want the players and we always want to work with them as often as we can.

“In every squad we have, we always lose a couple. My focus then has to be on the group that are here, and how do we win the games?”

“Marcus is in good form and we’d love to have had him as an option for this camp – but we haven’t got him,” Southgate added.

“We always make a judgement on how people are playing and he’s obviously played a lot for us.

“Marcus has over 50 caps now for England and close to 50 of those have been since I’ve been the manager.

“So I’ve known him a long time. I know what he’s capable of. It’s good to see him in the goalscoring form he’s in.

“There’s been a period in the last couple of years where he’s not been as hot as that and that’s been frustrating for everybody to see but he is in good form and we hope that can continue.”