Performance as important as points for England

England's performance will be almost as important as the three points they should collect when they open their 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign against Andorra on Saturday.
It is inconceivable that the outcome of their Group Six match will be anything other than an England victory but Fabio Capello's men need to play confident, convincing football against the whipping boys of Europe before meeting the far tougher challenge of Croatia in Zagreb next Wednesday.
England, in their first competitive match under Capello, will also want to avoid a repetition of what happened when they played Andorra at the same Olympic Stadium in Barcelona in March 2007 during their Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. Although they won 3-0 they were booed by their own fans after an abject first half display. Steven Gerrard, who will miss both qualifiers following a groin operation, put England ahead early in the second half but it was only late goals from Gerrard and David Nugent that gave the scoreline any respectability.
Capello, who has been in charge of England since January following the departure of Steve McClaren, has overseen England's recent friendly tally of three win, one draw and a defeat. Individual players have had good games but overall the performances have not been vastly different from those produced under McClaren and only a late goal from Joe Cole secured a 2-2 draw against the Czech Republic in England's last match on August 20.
Capello has faced criticism for naming only four strikers in his squad for the two games: Emile Heskey, Jermain Defoe, Theo Walcott and Wayne Rooney, and leaving out Michael Owen, who has scored twice for Newcastle United this season and has 40 goals from his 89 England appearances. Andorra will go into the match seeking damage limitation as they do in most of their internationals.
They endured a miserable Euro 2008 qualifying campaign, losing all 12 of their games, scoring just two goals and conceding 42. That included a 5-0 defeat by England at Old Trafford. Coach David Rodrigo, who has been in his post since 1999, had a bad start to his campaign in Kazakhstan two weeks ago, when they fell 3-0 in Almaty, conceding all three goals in the first half. Ukraine and Belarus are the other teams making up Group Six.
PROBABLE TEAMS:
ENGLAND: David James; Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Wes Brown; Gareth Barry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, David Beckham; Wayne Rooney, Emile Heskey.
ANDORRA: Koldo; Jordi Escura, Toni Lima, Ildefons Lima, Oscar Sonejee; Marcio Vieira, Marc Vales, Josep Ayala, Marc Pujol, Xavi Andorra; Fernando Silva.