Back to drawing board for Eriksson

Group BEmmet Malone is not convinced that England are good enough to win the tournament outright but feels they can still progress from the group

England coach Sven Goran Eriksson wore a brave face as he began his preparations for Thursday's game against Switzerland at the old national stadium just outside Lisbon yesterday. If deep down, though, the Swede really believes, as he has claimed, that his side is good enough to win this European Championship, he must now figure out just what he has to do when England's best was not quite good enough.

Few would disagree with the coach's assessment that his team played well at the Stadium of Light on Sunday evening, but in the wake of the dramatic injury-time goals that turned the result on its head, the fact that they did so well but still lost is actually part of the problem for a man whose immediate target now will be to secure qualification for the quarter-finals.

Eriksson deserves credit for getting both his team selection and tactics right against the French. Ledley King's performance in central defence alongside Sol Campbell was a key factor in England's largely successful attempt to contain their opponents around the box while the protection afforded to the back four by an industrious midfield enabled the English to stifle, if not the best, the the most potentially dangerous forward line in the championship.

However, the coach's substitutions may have been less inspired. Michael Owen had contributed little to Sunday's proceedings and his departure was perhaps overdue while Paul Scholes picked up the ankle injury that now makes him a doubt for the Swiss match, but quite why Wayne Rooney was replaced just minutes after he had earned his side a penalty with a sprint at lightening speed into the box that left Lilian Thuram looking old and Mikael Silvestre panic-stricken is altogether less clear.

In any case, neither Darius Vassell nor Emile Heskey made little positive impact on the game and the latter's contribution will be best remembered for his clumsy contact with Claude Makelele that led to the free from which Zinedine Zidane equalised for the French.

Afterwards, David James observed reasonably enough that, "we have lost here when we did not deserve to lose". He added, however, that "the fans know we deserved to win this game", which strays dangerously into the territory of self delusion, something the entire England party will do well to avoid if they are to bounce back from Sunday's disappointment and not allow the belief that they were in some way hard done by to fester.

While the team certainly did enough to merit a draw they could scarcely be said to have deserved the win after a game in which they scored from their only attempt on target (penalty kick apart) - and that from a free that television replays suggested had been the result of an act of generosity by referee Markus Merk rather than of any actual push on David Beckham by Bixente Lizarazu.

The English should still progress from a group whose other two teams, Switzerland and Croatia, did little to suggest on Sunday that they can upset one of their more fancied rivals. The wider question for Eriksson now is whether he can adjust the internal balance of his side so that it poses more of an attacking threat while remaining defensively solid if, as expected, they reach the quarter-finals knockout stages.

From play the English posed almost no danger at all to the French and if Eriksson's men are going to win rather than simply strive to avoid defeat when they take on the tournament's better sides then he will need to see the more adventurous side of Frank Lampard's game.

He must also get David Beckham to vary things to the point where opponents, as the French revealed they had done, don't simply have to watch videos of his spot kicks to predict with confidence which way he is going to send the ball. A little more of a return on Owen's involvement would help their cause as well.

The similarities between England's opening game here and Manchester United last-gasp triumph over Bayern Munich in the Champions League final of 1999 may have been all too obvious but as he left the Stadium of Light afterwards one man who was involved in both, Gary Neville, argued that there is an important difference too.

"You can't explain what happened in the last two minutes out there," he said, "but it didn't remind me of what happened in the Bayern Munich game. If it had been a final then maybe but this was a different scenario. We have the chance to come back and we believe that we can do it."

He may be right, but if they are to match the surprisingly high pre-tournament expectations back at home, then it will take fractionally more from the English than they gave on Sunday evening. Fractionally more, one suspects, than they have to give.