We don’t really have the skills to score an early goal.
We don’t have fluency because we don’t have the skills or habits to attempt a lot of fluency.
Yes, Adam Lallana has continental skills and he’s doing a valuable job.But he’ll never score a goal.
Roy Hodgson’s England rely on their running power.
It’s our running power that’s got us four points so far.
So we’ll play power football down the flanks, stretching the Slovaks, pushing them back, with Clytne and Bertrand cutting the ball back, passing it inside as often as they cross it, tiring out skipper Martin Skrtel and his mates.
Slovakia play 4-2-3-1 with 28-year-old Marek Hamsik, Napoli’s Mohican playmaker, providing all the ideas.
England will plan to overwhelm them as soon as possible. And hunt down the Mohican.
If we can’t do that in the first 45 or first 60, we’ll bring on the supercool Marcus Rashford and score in stoppage time.
On what we’ve seen so far, Hamsik is more reliably creative than anybody in the England team.
Last night I was appalled by hints that Jack Wilshere might come in to give Dele Alli a rest.
That would be insane! Play power football till tonight’s game is won, then bring Jack on.
Other newspaper stories suggest that Wilshere will start, not Rooney.
So we will have to see if that works, see if Wilshere is too slow, too injury-prone.
Henry Winter says Hodgson will make six changes.
Both full backs will be rested, Vardy and Sturridge will start, and Jordan Henderson will come into midfield.
So far it’s been Spurs v Russia, followed by Spurs v Wales, but now it’s Liverpool v Slovakia.
I’m not convinced by the six changes.
From where I’m sitting, Slovakia is a game that could go either way.
ADMISSION : Anybody’s third game can be boring.
But it’s more likely to be dull if one team has six points already.
That’s not the case at 8pm.
England, with plenty still to prove, will be jittery tonight.
And we will be English tonight.
The main quality we have is our Englishness, so I hope that will be enough.
Jamie Vardy, Leicester’s extraterrestrial ferret, is the kind of animal the Slovakian defence has probably never faced before. And I mean that in a nice way.