Roy Hodgson has indicated that Wayne Rooney will continue in England’s attack once he returns from injury despite Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy delivering a powerful case to change the order of merit with their goals in the 3-2 comeback win against Germany that has given the team a significant lift in advance of Euro 2016.

Hodgson, once again showing his loyalty to his captain, argued it was unfair to assume the Manchester United player might be “jettisoned in some way” when it was suggested to him that Kane and Vardy, the Premier League’s two leading scorers, had made it hard for Rooney to get back into the side.

Vardy, scorer of an outstanding goal as a second-half substitute in Berlin, will get the chance to lead England’s forward line when Holland visit Wembley on Tuesday. Daniel Sturridge will also be given a place in a new-look team and Hodgson, describing Kane’s performance as “excellent throughout”, believes he has more competition for forward places than at any time in his four-year tenure.

That places a question over Rooney’s suitability to start in this summer’s competition, on the back of another erratic season for him at club level, but Hodgson made it clear that England’s record scorer would still feature prominently in his plans.

“Wayne, I repeat, is our captain,” Hodgson said. “He has captained the team extremely well these past two years and taken us through a qualification campaign where we had complete success, 10 wins out of 10, so it doesn’t please me too much when it is suggested that the moment he gets injured and doesn’t play he deserves to be jettisoned in some way. He certainly doesn’t deserve that and when he comes back and is fit again he is going to be putting enormous pressure on these players, just as these players have been putting enormous pressure on him. That’s the situation we are looking forward to.”

Hodgson’s plan is to field a vastly different team against the Dutch in which Danny Drinkwater will win his first cap. Fraser Forster will start in goal now Jack Butland is injured while Ross Barkley, Theo Walcott and James Milner will also return to the side. Danny Rose will continue at left-back unless Hodgson brings in a late call-up for a defence featuring John Stones, Phil Jagielka and Kyle Walker.

Stones has started only one league game since January after dropping out of the Everton side and Hodgson, though supportive of the 21-year-old, has his own concerns about the player’s habit of making defensive errors because of his desire to play out from the back.

“We believe in John Stones, there is no question,” Hodgson said. “We think he is the type of centre-half who can be good for England but to use him he has to play well enough to break into his club side as his first task and I can’t do anything about that.

“Not so long ago he was being touted around as the best centre-back in the country, and a centre-back all the other top teams would have. He was being touted because people were saying: ‘Look how comfortable he is on the ball, look how composed he is when he brings the ball out of defence.’ Then he makes a couple of mistakes and all of a sudden we want to throw all that back on his head.

“He will have to understand that when you are a centre-half at a top, top club you can’t afford to make a lot of mistakes in every game. You have to cut those out. That does not mean that all of a sudden you have to change your game completely and start booting the ball up the field every time. It just means you have to improve and cut out some of the mistakes.”

Having been 2-0 down with half an hour to play, England’s victory in the Olympiastadion represents the high point of Hodgson’s reign but the manager was keen to play down expectations. “I would be disappointed if people dismiss it and say Germany were not up for it because we were very close to their bench and they found it difficult to deal with our pressing. That gives us encouragement. We want keep going like that with this team. The team has pace, mobility, a lot of legs, enormous technique and a lot of heart, but we have to keep working on it.”