England unlikely to slip up on finals path

England v N Ireland: Old Trafford BBC1 3pm  Push against an open door and you're likely to stumble. It's no wonder England have been ungainly in Group Six.

Today's opponents Northern Ireland, just like the other four rivals to Sven-Goran Eriksson's team, were not good enough to qualify for Euro 2004 and England therefore have the easiest path imaginable to next summer's World Cup finals.

Poland are only a point adrift of them, but they have already had their crack at Eriksson's side in Chorzow and lost. England are lucky to be in such a group, but its schedule is also a 13-month punishment. There is no fixture here in which a win would be taken as atonement for the loss to Portugal at Euro 2004.

England have no way either of measuring their strength when the resistance is negligible. In such circumstances, embarrassment is always at hand even if ultimate failure is unthinkable. This afternoon's fixture will be Eriksson's 50th with England and it was interesting to see how rapidly he could rhyme off past matches to prove that potential for discomfort always exists.

"Albania at home, Greece at home, Macedonia at home, Slovakia at home, Finland at home," the manager recited. "All those games: oh, suffering." None the less, Eriksson did come close to negotiating them all satisfactorily. Only Macedonia did harm and England, had they lost to Turkey in Istanbul, would have had to approach Euro 2004 through the play-offs.

The 2-2 draw with Macedonia arose because David Seaman made a mistake for one goal and Sol Campbell mis-hit a clearance so badly that it turned into a lay-off for the other. The blunders made for a seething atmosphere but there will be no gratitude if the encounter with Northern Ireland is riveting for comparable reasons.

England do need to be painstaking and men like Eriksson are professional worriers. Raise Northern Ireland's shaming loss to Canada in a friendly and he will discount it because of the dreadful conditions and the batch of chances missed by Lawrie Sanchez's team.

Mention Stuart Elliott, who is managed at Hull City by the England Under-21 coach Peter Taylor, and Eriksson will admire the quantity of goals he has scored and decline to write down their value just because they occurred in League One. All of this is an amalgam of politeness and superstition.

Who dares to provoke the gods by dismissing the opposition? There might even be a bona fide concern from Eriksson when he comments on Northern Ireland's effectiveness at set-pieces. At Euro 2004 Croatia scored twice in such a fashion against an England side in which too few players have the height to dominate in the air.

Eriksson's team, none the less, have several ways to make even an increasingly obdurate Northern Ireland quiver. The likeliest result would be a pedestrian England victory by a couple of goals. That would leave Eriksson open to renewed complaints that the England side long ago forgot how to excite the crowd. The Swede, for the moment, finds himself being lured into semi-comic discussions over precisely how bad last month's goalless friendly with the Netherlands really was.

Eriksson even had to take care when saluting the Euro 2004 champions Greece by making it clear that their grinding approach was appropriate to the standard of players they had. Any stolid habits within his own talented group are resented.

In fairness, any dullness originates in the nature of Group Six rather than in that of the England squad. If the team were to prove overwhelming this afternoon the focus would switch at once to the inadequacies of Northern Ireland. Eriksson would be happy to collect three more points in any fashion and then brave the reaction.

He shrank back slightly when someone proposed the Netherlands' total football of the 1970s style as the ultimate ambition. "With the players we have we should play good football," the manager said circumspectly. This most unlikely impresario, however, does have a possible spectacle to put before the public. He is being uncommonly effusive about Joe Cole.

"He almost seems to be another player," Eriksson marvelled. "He's taking the right decisions and working hard when he doesn't have the ball. He's changed a lot. He's always been one of the biggest talents but now he's taken one more step."

The Chelsea player is the latest right-footed performer to be dispatched to the problematic position on the left, but this will be a fixture in which Ashley Cole often pushes into the attack. Joe Cole would then be free to move inside and work closely with the strikers Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen.

Eriksson spoke to Ashley Cole on Tuesday and Thursday about the Arsenal full-back's state of mind following the charge laid against him by the Premier League. "I can't see that he's affected at all," said the manager. "He's been having very good training sessions. He seems very calm."

Northern Ireland will be aggressive at Old Trafford, but the equanimity of Cole and the rest of the England team should still be intact at the close of the game.

ENGLAND (probable): Robinson, G Neville, A Cole, Ferdinand, Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Beckham, J Cole, Rooney, Owen. Subs (from): James, Green, King, Carragher, Brown, P Neville, Downing, Hargreaves, Dyer, Jenas, Defoe, Heskey

NORTHERN IRELAND (Probable): Taylor, Baird, Murdock, Hughes, Capaldi, Gillespie, Johnson, Doherty, Whitley, Elliott, Healy. Subs (from): Carroll, Williams, Craigan, Clyde, Doherty, Brunt, Mulryne, Jones, Smith, Kirk, Feeney

Head to head: P59 - Eng wins 44, NI wins 4; D11. Last three meetings - Nov 13th, 1985 - England 0-0 N Ireland (WCQ), Oct 15, 1986 - England 3-0 N Ireland (ECQ), Apr 1st, 1987 - N Ireland 0-2 England (ECQ)

Referee: Wolfgang Stark (Germany)

Guardian Service