Seaman may be forced to jump ship

SVEN-GORAN ERIKSSON is adamant he has the necessary ruthless streak to axe under-performing players and he will use the four months before England’s next game to see whether David Seaman falls into that category.

Eriksson maintains the Arsenal goalkeeper is still as good as ever but he will have to be near-perfect for his club after his aberration against Macedonia if he is ever to play for England again. Forget Artim Sakiri, Seaman must feel like committing hara kiri.

The likelihood is that Eriksson will decide that the time has come for change. It may be that after 75 caps Seaman jumps before he is pushed - if so England fans will be hoping he times his jump right for once.

Seaman’s misjudgment to allow Sakiri’s corner to go straight in over his head set the scene for a dismal 2-2 draw against one of the weakest teams in Europe, and Eriksson’s reputation as a tactical genius has taken something of a battering.

That scrutiny of the Swede will become more intense if England fail to win Group seven and qualify for Europe outright - and Turkey are now the clear favourites to do that - but Seaman’s international future commands the immediate attention.

Eriksson, as he would, remained completely loyal to his keeper but there was enough in his carefully-chosen words to suggest that Seaman’s battle to be in goal for February’s friendly, possibly against Denmark, will not be uphill so much as Himalayan.

‘‘I don’t think that David Seaman has changed - he’s still an extremely good goalkeeper,’’ said the England coach. ‘‘He made a mistake but you will never find a goalkeeper who will never make mistakes that’s for sure.

‘‘Let’s see what happens. I don’t have to pick a team for the next four months so that’s a lot of time to see what is happening and a lot of games to watch during that period.

Results count for everything of course and although England played better football than in their rather fortunate victory over Slovakia, Eriksson was forced to defend his decision to revert to a conventional 4-4-2 with Wayne Bridge on the left.

He had been expected to maintain the midfield diamond which functioned well in the second half in Bratislava with Paul Scholes playing just off the front two.

Furthermore, having been insistent that 4-3-3 was no good, especially for Michael Owen, it was that system which Eriksson changed to for the last half-hour against Macedonia in an unsuccessful search for a winner.

Eriksson insisted Darius Vassell came on for Bridge to play more as a winger, adding:

‘‘I don’t think we drew the game because of the system, I think we had bad luck and both of Macedonia’s goals we could have avoided.

“We created more than 10 very, very good chances and only scored twice,” he said.

Eriksson, who will now press ahead with plans to hold a squad get-together for a couple of days next month, admitted it was a novel experience for him to have to wait so long for a chance to put things right.

‘‘It would be good to have a game again but it’s finished for this year. The next one is in February, we will almost certainly have a get-together in November and I think that’s more important than ever after this draw.’’

Another blemish on England’s first match in Southampton for more than 100 years was the sending off of Alan Smith for two cautions, the second for a needless and reckless challenge in injury time.

The dismissal provides grist to the mill for those who reckon the Leeds striker’s temperament is too brittle to be trusted at international level.