BACKGROUND
Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side have home matches against Northern Ireland and Azerbaijan to come in March and while both look routine victories on paper the Swede will be anxious for a good performance to boost morale.
However, his preparations have once again been dogged by ‘injuries’ and withdrawals, which leaves a likely central defensive partnership of Jamie Carragher and Wes Brown, who in theory have little or no international future with the wealth of talent ahead of them.
England go into the match on the back of the disappointing and controversial defeat away to Spain last November. The performance was abject at best, but the aftermath was dominated by the racist chanting from the home side so the emphasis was taken away from the display of the players, and in particular Wayne Rooney.
TEAM FORM
England: WDWWWL
The defeat to Spain followed three successive wins in the 2006 World Cup qualification campaign. They came away to Poland and Azerbaijan and at home to Wales. The draw, which started their road to Germany, came away to Austria.
Holland: to follow
TEAM NEWS
Baring anymore withdrawals Eriksson is set to name a 4-3-3 formation with Shaun Wright-Phillips playing in attack alongside, most likely Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney. Crystal Palace’s striker Andy Johnson will get a run out at some point in his first international outing. The familiar midfielders of Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and captain David Beckham will be protecting the makeshift defence of Gary Neville, Brown, Carragher and Ashley Cole. Middlesbrough’s Stewart Downing will also make his debut at some point in the game.
Holland have also been hit with injuries as Ruud van Nistelrooy, Pierre van Hooijdonk, Philip Cocu and Arjen Robben were all unavailable for selection, while ex-captain Edgar Davids was left out by Marco van Basten due his lack of action at Inter Milan. Wesley Sneijder has since dropped out of the squad with a hamstring injury suffered in training. Edwin van der Saar will now take over the captains armband. There are two uncapped players in the squad, Heerenveen’s Ugur Yildirim and AZ Alkmaar’s Henk Timmer.
PROBABLE STARTING LINE-UPS
England: Robinson; G Neville, Carragher, Brown, Cole; Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard; Wright-Phillips, Rooney, Owen.
Holland: Van der Sar; Melchiot, Bouma, Kromkamp, van Bronckhorst; van Bommel, de Jong, Heitinga; Van der Vaart, Kuijt; Makaay
PREDICTION
International friendlies are largely pointless exercises and often tedious to watch, but they can give the respective managers rare of chances of being with their players and trying out new ideas when it doesn’t really matter if they don’t work. However, the paying public will be expecting results, and the English fans should go away happy as the Dutch squad is look
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