England will take on Croatia today in a crunching Euro 2008 qualifier that could propel Croatia to the top of the table if they tame the three lions.

England’s head coach Steve Mcclaren has said that he will tinker with his side’s formation and will go with a 3-5-2 formation with Gary Neville and Ashley Cole playing wingback roles.

McClaren said: “You can’t gamble, you have to know and I’m quite confident.

“If we have to play three at the back, those players we’ll be putting in there have played it before.

“There are all kinds of systems in the Premier League and I’ve been involved. We used to change systems out of necessity, because of injuries, because of opponents.

“To go to the next level we have to look at these situations. To go through the barrier we might have to try one or two things. You get very little time with England.”

He is right when he says England need to test with different formation systems, as all top teams need to do to be prepared for all kinds of situations.

The injury to Ledley King and the suspension of Steven Gerrard means that Mcclaren is quite short of options in his team considering the likes of Aaron Lennon,Owen Hargreaves,Joel Cole and Michael Owen are also injury absentees.

To top all of that up a certain Wane Rooney hasn’t been firing on all cylinders, and suprisingly enough Croatia’s coach Slaven Bilic believes the Football Association is to be blamed for imposing a ban on Rooney at the start of the season which the coach claims is the reason why Rooney lacks in sharpness.

This will probably be Mcclaren’s lineup:

Paul Robinson

Rooney
Crouch

So it looks like Scott Parker will make his appreance for England after a long layoff while Rooney despite his poor form may still start ahead of Jermaine Defoe.

The 3-5-2 is setup in such a way that it’s quite possible that England could switch to a 5-3-2 at anytime considering that their wingbacks are actually defenders whose placed could be in jeopardy if Mcclaren continues with a 3-5-2 and the likes of Joe Cole and Lennon are fit, i would think Lennon and Cole will play on the wings which would mean Neville and Cole could possibly be benched, but that’s all in the future and most probably Neville with get to keep his place with Carragher taking a bow, it’s definitey a point to ponder especially if England notched up a win in Craotia who has NEVER lost a qualifying match at home.

And in all this chaos a certain 31-year-old Real Madrid player was not even considered making the team….

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