http://bit.ly/qAZduK The exiled Dimitar Berbatov, instruction in Manchester yesterday

Referee: Frank De Bleeckere (Belgium)
England: Hart, Smalling, Cahill, Terry, Cole, Walcott, Parker, Barry, Downing, Young, Rooney.Subs: Stockdale, Jagielka, Baines, Milner, Lampard, Johnson, Defoe.
Bulgaria: Mihailov, Zanev, Bodurov, Milanov, Bandalovski, Ivanov, Georgiev, Martin Petrov, Stiliyan Petrov, Popov, Genkov.Subs: Vladislav Stoyanov, Iliev, Marquinhos, Sarmov, Raykov, Kostadin Stoyanov, Kostadin Stoyanov.
The pitch: Great for grazing.
England crew information: Frank Lampard is dropped in favour of Stewart Downing, who plays alongside Theo Walcott, Ashley Younger and Wayne Rooney in an attacking line-up. At the again, Chris Smalling is handed his debut, while Gary Cahill gets the nod alongside John Terry.
Kick off: 7.15pm BST.
This really should be a shoo-in for England, you would believe. "A win for England is nearly taken for granted," writes our guy in Sofia, Kevin McCarra, riffing on Fabio Capello's exceptional away record (nine wins in 13). Let's see, then.
Bulgaria's main purpose risk: Movie noir's Dimitar Berbatov, who has prematurely retired from global football, in order to suck down filterless cigarettes, have on extensive-brimmed hats, go over existentialist philosophy in bistros more than quite robust cups of coffee, and pay attention to west-coast jazz.
Historical records only count for so considerably, that is correct. But the previous of individuals 9 games was a 4- tonking at Wembley 364 days in the past, in the opening video game in this Euro 2012 qualifying group, Jermain Defoe the hat-trick hero. Present-day England line-up consists of Wayne Rooney, Ashley Young and Theo Walcott, all of whom are bang in kind, superb in attack for the duration of that eight-2 video game at Old Trafford previous weekend as they had been. Bulgaria's assault, meanwhile? Their primary gentleman Stiliyan Petrov states it all: "Our recreation program is to frustrate England by staying sound at the again then exploit their developing nervousness with a successful objective. The difficulty is wherever that aim may well come from."
Very good evening, dear folks. Now then. England have a quite very good record towards Bulgaria. In 9 games given that the two teams 1st satisfied at the 1962 World Cup finals in Chile, the English have won five moments, drawing the other four, scoring 13 targets along the way although conceding a mere two.