I'm trying to figure out how Sweden can win against England but can't quite come up with a way for us to score.

Zlatan is out of form, he won't do anyone any good.

Larsson is very well known in England so there will be no surprises there. His main quality is being extremely intelligent off the ball and a good finisher, as well as surprisingly good on his head for such a "short" player. However, Rio is faster and better in the air, and Terry is horribly competent at the destructive game and will read his runs well.

Allbäck who might play instead of Zlatan is a decent striker but not more. He's an OK target player but really more of a penalty area poacher. He has neither the strength or speed to match Englands defense and has no dribbling skills.

Ljungberg is probably our biggest hope, but he's even more well known that Larsson and I'm sure that the nglish defense knows how to stop him.

Källström has a sledge for a left foot but I doubt he'll have many opportunities to use it, playing against Gerrard in the midfield.

Looks like our chance will be either from set pieces (which England is good at defending against) or from Ljungbergs runs (he IS best in the world at getting awarded free kicks).


I'd say there are only two things that are really in Swedens favor going into the game:

1. England has already qualified
2. History. We haven't lost against England since 1968 (7 draws, 3 wins)

If each player was at his peak I'd make England reasonable favourites, but now that there are so many players on both sides either out of form or recovering from injury, I'm tempted to take the draw with Ladbrokes at 9/5.

However, 0-0 is available at 5/1, and as neither team is finding the net with any regularity, the draw is sufficient for Sweden (or even desirable if Germany don't beat Ecuador earlier) and both teams will be keen to conserve energy for the later rounds, I think those are pretty decent odds.

Lennon won't play. We're not playing a system and selection that works for our players, and we don't have any alternative plans for when things go awry. Most of the players look like they've only just met each other in the last week. Our defence is still strong and on paper we're as good as just about anyone but I don't see any sign of the current coaching staff and selection getting anywhere near the best out of these players. We don't have a chance as soon as we play someone decent.