Andorra Preview

Well Saturday couldn’t have gone any better, could it! A four goal win away from home, six wins out of six, our nearest rivals drawing and a seven point lead going into a home game against the bottom team in the group.

Not the time to get complacent though, even though the facts are overwhelming: Andorra have only ever picked up a point away from home in the World Cup qualifiers (against Macedonia in 2005) and have never won an away game. They scored against Belarus on Saturday, defender Ildefons Lima notched in the last minute but by that time the Belarussians had scored five. Lima – Andorra’s all time leading scorer – plays for AS Triestina in Italy’s Serie B whereas the rest of the Andorran squad play for minor Spanish clubs or in the eight team Andorran league.

On the other hand, we ‘ve only lost two home World Cup qualifiers since 1997 (Italy and Germany) and haven’t been beaten at home since Croatia knocked us out of Euro 2008. Not much to report on the England team today, although it’s worth keeping an eye on whether Theo Walcott will play or not seeing as though he’s supposed to be playing for the under 21s later this week (and apparently if Arsene Wenger had his way he wouldn’t even be playing for them) and that Beckham, Johnson and Heskey would all miss the Croatia game if they were booked tomorrow night.

We’re going to try something a bit different tomorrow night: a commentary on twitter – if you want to follow it follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/11lions . Can’t guarantee what time coverage will start and as I’ll be watching the British Lions latest tour game, I’ve got a ‘Big Brother’ issue with my other half and if England score an early goal it might turn into a discussion about ITVs coverage

Couple of non-football notes to finish on: there’s a tube strike on London Underground tomorrow and having been up to Wembley three times since it reopened I can only begin to imagine how much chaos that might cause. There have been various reports this evening that Setanta is facing administration – which raises the question of which channel might carry England away games if/when Sentanta goes down the tubes…sorry, couldn’t resist that one.

Enjoy the game!

World Cup Qualifier England v Ukraine

England resume their world cup qualifying campaign on April 1st against Ukraine in brand new shirts. Apart from a wild guess that the new home shirt will be mostly white and the change shirt will be mostly red, that’s a topic for another day, so let’s take a quick look at the situation in Group Six.

With a five point lead over both Croatia (who we’ve already beaten) and Ukraine (in third at present having only played three games), there’s a strong possibility England could be the first European team to qualify for South Africa 2010 and despite the recent defeat in Spain I can’t see any reason to disagree. Yet it’s always worth remembering that there are no medals for being the first to qualify

We’ve got a good record against Ukraine (we’ve won both previous games without conceding a goal but we haven’t played them for almost five years), but having said that, they’re currently on a seven game unbeaten run, they’re pretty tight defensively and they’ve got plenty of decent players – some of whom you may have heard of.

The England squad named for this weekend’s friendly against Slovakia and the qualifier next week contained a couple of mild surprises, one of which seems to have backfired. The only new name in the squad is Leighton Banes of Everton, who I would imagine is seen as a potential squad player for next summer; although there’s no doubt that Ledley King is an international quality player he has a debilitating injury that means he can’t train normally from game to game and it’s not totally clear why Fabio Capello bought him into the squad. On Tuesday afternoon it was announced that King had left camp and was considering his international future, which would be a real shame.

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England v Slovakia, Saturday March 28th 4pm GMT on Setanta Sports 1
England v Ukraine, Wednesday April 1st 8pm GMT on ITV1