Roy Hodgson claims he will only be selecting players who have been in form all season[GETTY]His comments slam the door in the face of Connor Wickham, Adam Johnson and Harry Kane, who had been hoping late runs of form would be enough to squeeze a place on the plane to Brazil.
England's World Cup history has been littered with players coming late to star at major tournaments, from Geoff Hurst, who made his debut just five months before the 1966 World Cup, to Paul Gascoigne, a late member of the 1990 squad.
But in a Fifa.com interview Hodgson said: "As a manager I was never keen on making strong judgments on players, either to buy them or to sell them or to retain them in the last two or three weeks of the season. I wanted to make my decision around the November-to-early-March time because that's where things are really done.
"So, we'll watch games, but we're not watching thinking, 'Shall we or shan't we?' You don't become a good player over two games or a bad player over two games.
"I've had a very clear idea of what I want to do with this squad for a long, long time. Certainly over the last couple of weeks I'm pretty much sure of what I want to do when it comes to the team."
The only major thing affecting World Cup selection now is injury - and the fear yesterday was that Andros Townsend is set to go the same way as Jay Rodriguez in limping out of contention.
Spurs star Andros Townsend looks set to miss the World Cup this summer [GETTY]I'm not going to make decisions in the last week or two of the season, which is a notoriously bad time to judge talent
The Tottenham winger underwent a second MRI scan yesterday on an ankle injury picked up against Stoke on Saturday and early indications were that the damage is serious enough to rule him out of this summer's tournament.
Ironically, Hodgson had cited that sort of scenario as his main concern in the final weeks of the season.
"Jay damaged his cruciate ligament in a game where I was actually watching from the stands," he said. "You hope that's not going to happen again. But there's no point being nervous or worried about that because it's totally outside of your control.
"I can hope, like the rest of the world, that it doesn't happen. And I can hope for the player's sake that it doesn't happen but there's nothing I can do about it."
With Townsend out, Raheem Sterling would be favourite to take his place - although it would be his form of the whole season that Hodgson would be rewarding rather than his recent brilliance in pushing along Liverpool's title bid.
"If anyone new on the scene has emerged I'm judging him over several months," Hodgson said. "I'm not going to make decisions in the last week or two of the season, which is a notoriously bad time to judge talent."
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