European play-offs throw up interesting ties

The European play-offs for the World Cup threw up some interesting ties - and emphasised the importance of England qualifying top of the group rather than having to make it through the play-off system.

The ties with the teams' current FIFA rankings are:

Portugal (14) v Sweden (25)

France (21) v Ukraine (20)

Greece (15) v Romania (29)

Iceland (46) v Croatia (18)

Imagine if England had failed to win their group and had to face France to qualify! As it is Ukraine, seeded as one of the top-four ranked teams, have a tough draw facing the country one below them in the rankings.

Portugal and Sweden provide a tasty looking tie, but there will be fewer British eyes watching Greece battle with Romania or Iceland tussle with Croatia.

Portugal, France, Romania and Croatia are my picks to make it to Brazil.

I hope these are on TV, so we get a chance to watch without suffering!

The two-legged ties will be played on 15 November and 19 November.

Unimpressive England shake the monkey off their back

England completed back-to-back1-0 victories with their win over Sweden last night.

The result against Sweden was, for once in a friendly, more important than the performance, as it shook the monkey from its back in the form of failure to beat Sweden in 12 attempts in 43 years.

However, it was another typical England performance - despite numerous personnel changes from the Spain game. A reasonable first half was rewarded half-way through with a deflected Gareth Barry header to give them the lead, but the second half was pedestrian and England failed to capitalise on their first-half performance, thereby always keeping Sweden in the game and with a chance of equalising.

It has happened so many times before, but on this occasion England held on to win.

Complaints from the likes of Cesc Fabregas and Vicente Del Bosque about England's performance and style of play ("defensive", "physical") against Spain rather smack of sour grapes. England know they are not as good as Spain, and to try to match them at their own game would be footballing suicide. There are many ways to play football - that's what makes it so fascinating - and although we can all admire and aspire to Spain's style of play, it would takes years to get anywhere close.

Having said that, as Gus Poyet says (BBC) something must be done about the lack of technical ability in England. Talk gets us nowhere; it's time for action.