Slovenia v England – World Cup match preview.
Posted on June 22nd, 2010 | 124 Comments |
It was supposed to be a group where England built on an impressive qualifying campaign and swept three ‘weaker’ sides away to make a statement of intent to the rest of the tournament that we would be able to live up to our label of one of the favourites to win the trophy, but it hasn’t quite worked out like that.
A 1-1 draw in the opening game against the USA could have been a blip, but that blip turned into a crisis after the lacklustre 0-0 draw against Algeria last Friday left us needing to win the final game of the group against Slovenia just to ensure qualification for the knockout stages.
What happened after that draw can oly be described as farcical, with Rooney spitting the dummy in front of a worldwide audience, a man called ‘Pavlos’ needing the bog and stumbling upon the England changing room where he confronted our international “stars”, rumour has it he was attracted by the smell of s**t emanating from there, stories of infighting and undermining of the manager, epitomised by the king of morals, John Terry, and his ‘big I am’ speech to the press, only for him to be cut down to size by Capello less than 24 hours later. Thank heavens for the French eh? The only team who are making England look organised.
But we still have a chance, depsite all that has gone on, and now we know where we stand, we know what we have to do against Slovenia in Port Elizabeth on Wednesday afternoon, the maths are simple – three points for The Three Lions is a must, and if we can do that then we will be guaranteed to progress to the knockout stages of the World Cup.
England go into the game without the injured Ledly King and suspended Jamie Carragher, and that means that Matthew Upson will be set to deputise in the middle of defence. As ever, team selection remains a tightly guarded secret under Capello, although if I was him I would seriously consider dropping Emile Heskey for Jermaine Defoe who looked lively when he came on against Algeria. I would also give Joe Cole the nod in midfield and drop Lampard, but then again, I’m not the boss. That leaves my team looking like;
England – James, Johnson, Terry, Upson, A Cole, Lennon, Barry, Gerrard, J Cole, Defoe, Rooney.
Slovenia head into the match without defender Marko Suler who picked up a rib injury against the USA, Matej Mavric will be likely to deputise in his absence in what is a squad that otherwise has a clean bill of health.
A defensive outlook can be expected as the Slovenians know that securing a draw will be enough for them to progress to the next round and leave England sweating on the result of the USA v Algeria match that will be played at the same time. In their last match, Slovenia lined up with a team of;
Slovenia – Handanovic, Brecko, Suler, Cesar, Jokic, Koren, Kirm, Radosavljevic, Ljubijankic, Birsa, Novakovic.
England know that despite all that has gone on since the tournament started, a win here will go some way to putting it all to bed. Any other result doesn’t bear thinking about, although with England you just never know. We are favourites for the game, but that has been shown to be irrelevant on a number of ocassions in this World Cup.
One last chance, one final roll of the dice, Come on England!
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
My “sources” tell me ya close Toonsy but midfield will be
Gerrard Barry Lampard Milner :roll: