First up: Croatia.
Croatia:
Goalkeeper: Stipe Pletikosa, a regular in the Croatian national team and the first-choice goalkeeper since the 2002 World Cup (although he was injured for much of Euro 2004). Hasn’t made many mistakes since his Under-21s days.
Defence: On the right, Manchester City’s summer signing Vedran Corluka will turn out for Croatia. He’s 6′4″, athletic [...]

Steve McClaren still won’t reveal his starting 11 for tomorrow’s match against Croatia, but that isn’t going to stop me speculating.
Goalkeeper: The Times is reporting that Paul Robinson has performed abysmally in training, which probably means Scott Carson will get his first competitive start for England. The Guardian has the same story, but goes further [...]

Football365.com columnist John Nicholson thinks that the FA should create a new Championship team - England FC - made up entirely of young English players, to serve as a means of training young players outside of the usual system. Is it genius or just batshit?

Best manager in the world!

Steve Mac has named a humungous 28 man England squad for the friendly against Holland. He know you can only play 11 at a time, right?
The only eye-popper is the inclusion of 18 year old centreback/right back Micah Richards. Kieran Richardson misses out, which is fair enough - he’s rubbish, but a [...]

Hopefully Steve Mac will wield his axe, chop a few big names down to size, and add some fresh blood when he names his England squad tomorrow for the friendly against Holland on November 15th.
Aaron Lennon is back from injury and looking impressive for Spurs, so I’m expecting the dribbletastic right winger to get a [...]

According to The Independent, Stevie Mac is having informal dinner meetings with all the England players to discuss what went wrong against Croatia (and Macedonia), and what they’re going to do next.

Steve McClaren has hinted that Theo Walcott could get another go in the senior team in one of the two friendly games before Euro 2008 qualifying resumes.

Rumours are circulating that England will line up in a 3-5-2 against Macedonia, with Stewart Downing missing out. More here.

It will probably look like this:
GK: Paul Robinson
CB: The Neviller (G.)
CB: Rio Ferdinand
CB: John Terry
RWB: SWP
LWB: Cashley Cole
CM: Steven Gerrard
CM: Michael Carrick
CM: Frank Lampard
CF: Peter Crouch
CF: Wayne Rooney

In form Everton striker Andy Johnson has dropped out of the England squad with a hamstring injury, so Charlton’s Darren Bent has been called up to replace him, doing his now familiar last minute yo-yo between under-21’s and senior squad.