Relax, be positive is Keegan mantra

Twenty-four hours before their crucial meeting with Sweden, and the only sign of strain in the England camp yesterday came when the wind tugged the canvas walls of the interview room.

The results of Kevin Keegan's relaxation technique have been evident all week, providing a slightly surreal backdrop to such an important game which his team simply must win to retain any realistic hope of qualifying for the European Championship finals without recourse to a playoff.

Watching Alan Shearer munching on a biscuit and chatting merrily between interviews yesterday made one wonder if Keegan had left his players so laid back that they will lie down at Wembley this afternoon.

Even Keegan looked as though relaxed had turned to sleepy when he said of the Group Five leaders: "I'm not even going to guess how they play," just minutes after admitting that later in the day the players would be guided through the serious business of assessing the opposition by video. "The players will be given a very accurate assessment of what Sweden are all about," were his words.

Indeed, after saying "I'm not even going to guess how they play," he did just that. "Will they come with an absolutely carefree attitude," he mused, "Thinking,

well, we can take liberties because if we win that's us there, and if we lose it's no big deal. I don't know enough about the Swedish team. I guess they'll come and be very resolute and determined not to give us anything, and to look to profit from the fact that they know we have to win the game."

But despite the holes in his script, Keegan's record as a manager suggests that he has fastened on to a winning formula - the calm before the storming of the Swedish defence, and, hopefully, the Bulgarian back line on Wednesday too.

"My approach is to relax the players. The freedom that I give them when they are together is not stupid. It's a trust in them. If they want to go shopping on a Thursday I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not a prison here."

Today will be the time when Keegan moves from from soother to soothsayer, from chilled to Churchillian, exhorting his squad in his inimitably positive way to produce yet one more performance at the end of a long, tiring season.

"With Wembley, with the crowd behind us, with the performance we had last time against Poland and the situation we're in, it's up to us to perform and go at them," he decreed yesterday in his final press conference before kickoff. "I shall tell my players that the next five days are very important for the whole country."

Shearer, who today picks up his 50th cap, has already knocked five goals this season past Sweden's Coventry goalkeeper Magnus Hedman.

Shearer's fledgling partnership with Andy Cole showed signs of promise if not goals against Poland at Wembley and Keegan has stuck with it - to start with at least. For Shearer's old striking buddy Teddy Sheringham sits eagerly on the bench.

If England have a concern it is not so much with the quality as the width. David Beckham has been asked to tuck in as well as go wide, so diluting his supply of crosses, while in the absence of a natural left-winger, the full-back Graeme Le Saux is being relied on to provide crosses from that flank. But his defensive duties will jeopardise that stock of ammunition. In any case, the Chelsea player's crossing is too often off target.

But next to relaxation, Keegan's other mantra is positiveness. And as he said yesterday: "I always think my team will win."

He went on: "I'd just like my honeymoon to continue a bit longer, I don't want to fly back home early. I know what's round the corner but I don't know where the corner is.

"I want to keep on winning games and that gives us all the strength to keep being positive and keep the bandwagon rolling. That's how it starts - before you go on a journey, the bandwagon has to start rolling."