FOOTBALL: If saint David is playing, it's always worth you praying!

England went into yesterday's match knowing failure to clinch automatic qualification for the World Cup finals would have been as big an anti-climax as possible in football terms.

And while they couldn't have left it any later they have qualified and they'll arrive in Japan and South Korea next summer on a level playing field with everyone else.

I could understand Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier saying the other day that England can't win the World Cup next year.

History tells us how difficult it is for a team to win it on a different continent.

Unless you count Brazil winning in America in 1994, the only time that has happened was when the Brazilians did it in Sweden in 1958.

But next year will be the first time it has been held in Asia, so it'll be a whole new ball game there.

The South Americans will find it just as hard as the Europeans. So England will have as much chances as anyone. It's going to be different - and fascinating.

Even allowing for the absence yesterday of Michael Owen, David Seaman and Sol Campbell, everything was set up after the 5-1 win in Munich and if England had slipped up against Greece it would have been almost unbelievable.

But that, of course, is what almost happened.

The potential banana skin for me was not this game but the match against Albania at Newcastle just four days after winning in Germany.

There was the danger of complacency yesterday and maybe we saw that. They had to be focused and concentrate on the job in hand and it certainly took England a long time to get going.

But they got there in the end so lets give them credit for the way they kept going and remember, this is basically a young side. England aren't blessed with a lot of players with 60 or 70 caps behind them.

Look at Nigel Martyn, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Nick Barmby and Steven Gerrard. But on the other hand, a young side is one with a future.

I said last week in this column that I didn't think England needed to worry too much at this time about Michael Owen being out.

But I have to say I would have expected Teddy Sheringham to have played from the start after he was brought back into the squad.

I'm a big fan of Teddy's but at the age of 35, he's not a player for the future.

I can't see him going to the World Cup finals. But I could have understood him being brought in in a one-off situation like yesterday's. As that was the case, I thought he would have played from the start - but he certainly made an impact when he came on.

My one concern before the match was that England would become twitchy and nervous if Greece were still holding them at half-time.

It turned out to be even worse than that and once pressure gets to players, you don't know what is going to happen. I would also have been concerned for England if they had lost David Beckham and Gerrard - their other in-form players in addition to hamstring-victim Owen.

Sven Goran Eriksson certainly would not have been happy if he had lost that pair, too, in addition to Owen.

And Beckham proved once again just how important he is to England.

With a player of his ability in your side, you always have hope - and I believe England have grounds for taking plenty of that with them to the World Cup Finals.

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