Fabio Capello has gone with a mostly "on-form" starting XI for this England team. Bentley has been the best English attacking midfielder this season, and Jenas has been excellent in the new year under Ramos, playing box-to-box and timing his runs perfectly. James is the best English 'keeper at the moment (fortunate or unfortunate as it may be) in terms of performance and experience, and Matthew Upson offers an all-important, balancing left-foot in defence.

Whilst the exact formation hasn't been revealed, it will probably be something similar to what he used at Roma, when he was short of attacking talent.

I'd guess that it's a 4-1-2-2-1 formation:

James

Brown Ferdinand Upson A. Cole

Barry

Gerrard Jenas

Bentley J. Cole

Rooney

Barry will sit deep and mop up, playing short, simple passes. Gerrard will probably stick a bit more in the centre, controlling the game, getting stuck in, and going on his forward bursts. The thing with Gerrard is that he isn't versatile - play him deep, and his game suffers, and play him too high up the pitch, and his game suffers, so it's best to allow him to do as he pleases in the centre. Barry complements him will.

Jenas' role will be a bit trickier. Off the ball, I think he will assist Gerrard and the fullbacks with ball-winning, but when in possession, he will probably be making forward runs to support the front 3, and will be the one providing runs beyond the striker form the centre.

Bentley will be allowed to do what he does best in his roving right-sided role, and Joe Cole has been playing for long-enough on the left to do so without any bother. Expect him and Bentley to switch flanks often, and if the players are reading each other well enough, Cole, Jenas, Rooney and to a lesser extent Bentley, should all be interchanging positions.

Enjoy the game everyone, and I'd love to hear your comments throughout the match, should make for a fun bit of discussion! 

Obviously the mini-media-buzz that surrounded Fabio Capello's omission of David Beckham from the England squad was reasonably warranted, but it makes us wonder about Beckham's future, as well as the intentions of Capello.

It's understandable that he's well short of match fitness, and one can't hold that against Capello - sentimentality would have been a silly reason to call him up, and I'm sure that both the coach and player would want the 100th cap to be merited, and the call-up to be necessary.

However, on the issue of match fitness - it is a tricky situation. The MLS doesn't start until late March, and it's possible that by then Capello will have become more familiar with the English game and players, and a bit more rigid in his team selection. Capello has in any case not been a big one for rotating players, and if he finds his side working by the time Beckham gets match fit in April, it might be tough.

Granted, there aren't too many international ties between now and then, but International management often involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work and premeditated decisions; because you don't have the players together very often, team selections and tactics are made ready so that when training sessions begin, everything is in place for match preparation.

As for the actual issue of match fitness, the low standard of the MLS will prove to be an obstacle. It's quite possible that the month of training at London Colney with Arsenal has got Beckham in better shape than what a couple (or more) of months in  the MLS would. Arsenal are well known for their intensive training sessions, and the excellent fitness of their players. Beckham spent two weeks on intensive fitness training, and by the end of his stint was fully involved with the players.

The poverty of the opposition (and to some extent his own teammates) in the MLS means that Beckham is going to take a while to find his feet. Physically he might be fit, but match sharpness, especially the level required for the England squad, might be hard to come by. And even if Becks is sharp, and playing well, it's entirely possible that Capello would rather pick someone who is performing well in the Premier League. All the other England squaddies are domestically based, and Capello is not going to travel all the way to the States to watch Beckham play. He will have to rely on the word of his scouts, and TV coverage (assuming he doesn't destroy the TV after 5 minutes of having to put up with the MLS commentary); it's always hard to tell how prepared a player is from so far.

And lastly, there is of course the possibility that Capello is just testing out the other players, before making an eventual decision. He is well aware of Beckham's abilities after he broke back into Capello's Real Madrid side last season, and helped inspire them to the title. He knows exactly what Beckham can bring to his team, and he knows exactly how Beckham operates under his tactics, so he might just be using this time (they are friendlies) to see how the other England candidates do.

What do you think about Beckham's chances for his 100th cap, and his England future? Leave your comments below!

This will sound especially bizarre after Portsmouth's humbling at the hands of Liverpool today, but Harry Redknapp was the right man for the England job. That's not to say that Fabio Capello won't do well, but Harry had everything that was needed. He's great at getting the best out of what he has, he's worked with several of the players before, and he likes his teams to attack.

Sven Goran Eriksson was by far the most successful manager that England have had in recent years. Critics complained that he had failed to win England a major tournament, but then who had? They're a side that haven't done fuckall since 1966, and the unfortunate Sky and Premiership hyperbole seems to have players and fans alike believe that the England squad is far better than it actually is.

What ultimately really got the fans on Sven's back, was that England didn't play exciting football. They played result-oriented football, to the best of their abilities, and when faced with the world's best, like Brazil, Portugal and France, they couldn't survive. They always managed to compete though, and were never massacred, but the players weren't upto the level of technique where Sven could trust them at.

This year, after City's rousing start to the season, the press asked Sven why England never played like that, and his simple and honest answer was that he never had a player like Elano as England manager. That's the basic truth to all this - the present England players are lacking heavily in technique and skill, and so they have to be organised in a way that compensates for this, and that requires a tremendous amount of humility, which the players simply don't have.

Capello is an angry man with a big personality, and he will make sure the players do what he says, and he won't mince his words. But if people thought that Sven's brand of football was uninspiring, they will be in for even worse with Capello. His only focus is winning, and he doesn't care about style or substance or anything as long as he gets 3 points.

He's also a stereotypical Italian tactician, and his lack of English is going to hamper his communication to his players. Additionally, he's never managed an international team, so it will be interesting to see how he does with England, since he only has the players together for a few days every month. My guess is that he'll strip the play down to the bare essentials, and the fans won't like it. Neither will the media, and that battle is one of the biggest for an England manager. If the media starts to get on your back, the wheels might just start falling off the wagon.

Now Capello is a strong enough character to deal with all of this, but he's going to have to conduct quite a reality check once he starts. In his first spell at AC Milan, he had Van Basten, Rijkaard, Maldini, Gullit and co. Then at Real, he had Raul, Morientes, Suker and Mijatovic. Back at Roma, he had Totti, Batistuta, Cassano, Tomassi and Emerson. At Juventus, he had Buffon Ibrahimovic, Vieira, Del Piero, Emerson, Camoranesi and Nedved. And then back at Real, he had Raul, Ronaldo, Beckham, Cassano, Robinho, Van Nistelrooy, Gago, Guti, and Casillas. That is an awesome array of talent to always have been supported by.

Who does he have with England? Well... Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, and Joe Cole. Gerrard as well is probably just a little bit overrated, but that's essentially the issue. Rio Ferdinand can play a bit when he's not busy with orgies and booze, and Peter Crouch can be a jack-in-the-box, but essentially the England squad is full of very, very limited players, and has no goalkeeper (surely, only the most deluded of fans still believe that Paul Robinson is "world class?).

At his previous clubs he's always been able to request the players that he wanted, but international management doesn't have transfer feers unfortunately. Granted, that's more than OK if you're the manager of Brazil, or Italy or France, but not quite with England. The core group of England players might be as talented as some top sides, but in terms of depth, there's not much. So the key is getting the best out of the players that you have, and that is where Harry Redknapp is excellent.

OK, he is a bit of a wheeler-dealer on the transfer market, but those who've followed him for many years know that it's not what he relies on. Constant injury problems, lack of funds, and switching of clubs mid-season have shown that he organises the team according to the players he has, and can innovate very well. He's never won anything major, but he's shown he can beat the best, and play attacking football.

Also, across the various clubs he's been at, he's had Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Jermain Defoe, Glen Johnson, David James, Peter Crouch, Theo Walcott, Rio Ferdinand, Anton Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Sol Campbell playing for him. That's the core of the England squad right now, and he knows them in-and-out. Plus, he's been a Premiership manager for years, and knows the rest of the players quite well. This is as opposed to Capello, who admittedly says he doesn't know too much about the Premiership, and intends to do homework with watching loads of videos.

Having said all of this, Capello and Redknapp are in two completely different classes of manager. One could take the Italian comparison, and compare Capello to Lippi (two highly succesful, legendary club managers), and Redknapp to Donadoni (canny managers, who have managed small clubs, and not won anything, but know how to organise teams).

I'm in favour of Redknapp in this case, because he would have cost a fraction of what Capello did, and would not have put the pressure on England in such a big way. Now, they've gone for one of the biggest names available, on one of the biggest salaries available, and if they still fail, they one of football's proudest nations will end up as a laughing stock. It's a miracle they aren't already, because anyone who hired Steve McLaren should be.

Back in May, when Chelsea failed to beat Arsenal at Ashburton Grove, thereby handing the title to Manchester United, Arsenal fans took great delight in singing "Sacked in the summer, you're getting sacked in the summer" to the hyperactive Jose Mourinho. Bordering on obnoxiousness as always, the Portuguese manager had charged on the field at full-time, gesturing wildly to the crowd and trying to be the focus of attention.

Although that little interchange amused many, tellingly not a lot of eyebrows were raised - Mourinho was clearly not too happy with how things were being run at Chelsea, and Chelsea were allegedly not too happy with the style of football played under Mourinho, and his unwillingness to be pushed around by their collection of suits - Kenyon, Buck, Abramovich and Zahavi, of which only the latter can have some claim to being a "football man".

Add to that the appointment of Avram Grant from Portsmouth as Director of Football (not to mention the arrival of Frank Arnesen many months earlier to oversee the scouting and talent acquisition) and Chelsea clearly seemed to be building the sort of system that makes a manager's wishes irrelevant. In someways they have jumped from being small to "big" in a very short span of time, and without really having the structure to match. They have hurriedly tried to cobble together a "structure" at the club, and this smells of an insecurity towards the age-old foundations established at powerhouses like AC Milan, Barcelona, and closer-to-home... Arsenal and Manchester United.

I don't think Abramovich liked the fact that Chelsea were reliant for success on Mourinho, especially with the disagreements over playing style and the arrival of certain personnel (Shevchenko, Ballack, Wright-Phillips), and so he decided to establish a "continental-style" structure that would oversee everything to do with the sporting aspects of the club other than the actual coaching, tactics and and operations of the first-team. Any manager arriving in the future would have to work within these constraints, but Mourinho had been there before it all, and was the man responsible for delivering Chelsea's first meaningful silverware in 50 years, so it was never going to work well.

Mourinho may not have played terrific football, or thrilled many (or any), but he had a talent for figuring out how to win or draw football matches. I can't remember any games where they every looked out of a tie, and their resilience and solidity were incredible. You can't hire a manager to win you titles, and when he wins you titles, start telling him how to do his job.

So out goes one of the brightest young managers in Europe, the only surprise being that it was a month into the season instead of before it. Whoever comes in now will have a difficult task, because they can't afford to let performances flag. Avram Grant has stepped up to the mantle for now, but two of the names being bandied about are Fabio Capello and Guus Hiddink. Capello seems unlikely, given his fondness for signing Italians wherever he goes (and the fact that the transfer window doesn't reopen for some months), and when you factor in the Russian connection, and his friendship with Abramovich, Hiddink is not the unlikeliest candidate in the world. Harry Redknapp is a less-likely figure, but another shrewd operator, and someone who likes to play exciting football.

Apparently, there is some sort of clause in the Beckham-Galaxy contract that might allow Real to hangon to him .

HAHAHAHA if that happens... anticlimax of the century.