Roy Hodgson has banished agents from his England training camps in an attempt to avoid distractions over transfers affecting the mood of the squad before the World Cup. With continuing speculation over some of his players, including Southampton’s Luke Shaw, Hodgson has made it “very, very clear” that “when we’re together, it’s England and purely England and we’re not going to combine the two things”.

He said that any calls about transfers would have to happen “outside of our time”. Hodgson’s 23-man squad, plus the standby players John Stones and Jon Flanagan, returned from Portugal on Friday and will reconvene at St George’s Park in Staffordshire on Monday.

After Friday’s friendly against Peru there will be one more brief window for them to visit their families before they fly to Miami.

“That doesn’t mean to say that I’ve gone so far as to say that, if we’re in Miami and one afternoon a player needs to go for an x-ray or a medical in our free time after training, I’m going to say: ‘No, you can’t do it,’” said Hodgson. “What I am saying is that I’m not having agents come in to our training camp, I’m not having players leaving the camp speaking to clubs or agents and I’m not having players leaving the camp to go for medicals.”

Hodgson said he had yet to decide whether to play his first-choice XI in the friendly against Peru, selected to provide a taste of South American opposition. “There will be a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of people wanting to play in that game. I have 25 players who will be putting their hand up saying: ‘Pick me, pick me, I want to play,’” he said. “The most important thing is a good footballing team performance, we are not extrapolating from it … I don’t believe in that. But what I do believe is, if the team play well and we see good defensive work or attacking work, that will stand us in good stead going forward.”