By Myles Palmer
England’s new Under-21 boss David Platt is on the same wavelength as Arsene Wenger, so he knows that Wenger is very, very keen to start the season with a win at Middlesbrough on Saturday.
So they will have agreed in advance how Francis Jeffers will be used against Holland at Reading tonight.
Ideally, Jeffers will score a couple goals and come off at half time without being injured.
Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch his skills, his runs, his passing, his link-up play, his temperament.
I’m convinced Jeffers will become a prolific poacher for Arsenal. But tonight he will not be getting any clever passes from Pires, Vieira or Bergkamp.
It will probably be a scrappy game, with young England unable to dominate in the way that Arsenal will often dominate this season.
But it will be worth watching, just to see how Jeffers copes with that frustration and with service which may be far from ideal.
He is an aggressive, spiky striker, a man who puts himself about, and that is one of the reasons Wenger signed him.
Arsenal needed to add a bit of aggression to the pace of Henry and the craft of Pires, two guys who can be a bit too nice on the field.
Keeper Stuart Taylor also starts the game in a defence that includes Chelsea’s John Terry and Villa’s Gareth Barry.
TEAM : Taylor; Luke Young,Terry, Barry and Waytne Bridge of Southampton; Jonathan Greening of Middlesbrough, David Dunn of Blackburn, Sean Davis of Fulham, Luke Chadwick of Man Utd, and Darius Vassell of Villa up front with Jeffers.
14th August 2001.