It’s make-or-break time for Stan and the boys, with these two trips to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, games which are going to decide whether we qualify next summer. Two draws will be absolutely no use, so we’ll need to approach the Slovakia game as if we were at home, and go for the throat. If we get the three points there, we might be happy enough to get a point in Prague: four points would be a decent return. What we can’t do is afford anything less than a win in Slovakia.

Stan’s future depends on these two games, and he knows it.
It won’t be easy: we’ve had easier matches and failed. We’ve been very poor away from home in this group. But after a horrible start, there have been signs of progression and moving in the right direction, and we look like a side that’s a year or two away from being a serious force. The team is now starting to pick itself in most positions - the back four and the front two are settled. In midfield, there’s a bit more competition, with probably six lads fighting for four places.
The Slovaks play a very neat, short passing game, so there’s a good case for sticking Lee Carsley in there to break it up. But we have to be on the offensive and looking for goals as well, so we need someone who can play a killer pass: Andy Reid has to be the man. He was first-class against the Danes. I’d pick Stephen Hunt on the left and Aiden McGeady on the right: they’re both solid, and have a bit of flair about them and are capable of nicking goals. This means Stephen Ireland and Kevin Kilbane missing out, but Kilbane’s experience might be very useful coming off the bench.
The squad has a few fringe players - Jonathan Douglas, Alan O’Brien and the three Wolves lads - but it would be completely the wrong time to throw people in at the deep end. With games this crucial, you need your most reliable, proven, tried-and-trusted operators. If you’ve just won a friendly 4-0 away from home, against a side like Denmark, you have to keep doing the same thing that worked for you and stick with it.
Obviously, the nightmare scenario is that we get beaten twice. They say international managers are always two games from the chop, and Stan’s no different. If we have two games from hell, the pressure would become too much and there would be a clamour for his head. With luck, it won’t happen. But you need the public on your side, and if he loses the goodwill and trust of the fans, there’s no future for him. He seems to be growing into the job, after 18 months, and the team looks healthier than it did six months ago. But these two games are massive for him.
England have a make-or-break week too, with big qualifiers coming up against Israel and Russia. I expect them to win both games, but you can’t be certain. Since McClaren took over, they’ve been indifferent, they’ve really stumbled on occasion, and there’s been a few strange decisions - making a big deal of dropping David Beckham, then recalling him. He hasn’t really established a forward line, with Owen and Rooney being injured on occasion.
They seem to fall into some of the bad habits they picked up under Sven: Rooney gets very isolated up front. Their best player in this campaign, by a mile, has been Peter Crouch who was one of the scapegoats for the World Cup. It’s been tricky for McClaren: a lot of it hasn’t been his fault, but it looked like a very negotiable group and I’m surprised they’ve made as hard work of it as they have. There’s no need to panic, though: if they win both games, they’ll be in a great position.
After years of being a bad joke, Northern Ireland look like a new team, and still have hopes of getting out of their group. Obviously, Lawrie Sanchez leaving to take the Fulham gig was the last thing they wanted to happen. Nigel Worthington’s come in: he’d a great start at Norwich, brought them up, played some nice stuff, got relegated again and then had a dreadful season which finished him off. Now his nation’s on the verge of their biggest sequence of wins in years. The Liechtenstein game didn’t count: the real tests start here.
They’ve still got it all to do; they’ve a few savage away games coming up. They have to go to Spain and you can forget about them picking anything up there, unless they call Gerry Armstrong and Pat Jennings out of retirement. The thing is, down the years, they’ve often been at their best away from home: ‘holding firm’ when they’re ‘under siege’, putting in that sort of heroic backs-to-the-wall performance, with ten men behind the ball. They’ll need to do that again two or three times if they’re to qualify, and I’ll be very, very surprised if they do.
Meanwhile, Roy Keane’s going through his first bad patch as Sunderland manager, but he won’t blink. It’s starting to look like he’s got a big battle on his hands to keep them up. But he would have known that before the season started. He paid over the odds for the goalkeeper, Craig Gordon, but he looks like he’s going to save them crucial goals and points, and given the cost of relegation, he’ll be worth every penny of the nine million pounds if he keeps them up.
Again, Michael Chopra cost more than he should have, but he scores goals and they’ll need every one of them. Kieran Richardson cost five-and-a-half million: I don’t think that was excessive for an international player of his talent. So I wouldn’t say he’s paid dramatically over the odds: he’s got an uphill battle trying to attract players to the North-East, so he has to pay more than the going rate to tempt them to move there. The goalkeeper looks great, but their back four is extremely slow and looks like leaking a lot of goals. The bottom line is, if they finish 17th in the Premiership, they’ll have had a successful season and Roy’s realistic enough to know that, even though he’s obviously more used to being at the other end. Bear in mind, this time last year, they were rock bottom of the Championship.