Life after Ulrika? Night Sven survived an even greater trial

Euro 2004 qualifiers: Sorry affair of the heart turns to sad affair on the pitch

Sven Goran Eriksson's troubles of the heart were supplanted quickly enough on a night when some of the inherent problems of English football, on and off the field, were ruthlessly attacked by the players and the riot police of a nation bemused by both the manners of the visiting fans and the artlessness of their players.

Michael Owen, yet again, rescued England from the worst consequences of their own failings and David Beckham had earlier staunched the flow of Slovakia's mocking superiority for much of the game. But neither of the goals did anything to dispel the sense that the England coach's deepest problem concerns his selection and direction of the nation's limited supply of outstanding talent.

His potential nightmare moved from the first editions of the newspaper which had paid his former mistress a fortune to the bankruptcy of a first-half performance that recalled with sickening exactness the poverty of the second-half collapse against Brazil which exposed England's World Cup ambitions in Japan three months ago.

Prospects in the qualifying phase of the European Championship were reduced to roughly the same level as Eriksson's team failed utterly to make any early sense of his decision to play Paul Scholes, England's most incisive central midfielder, on the left and Emile Heskey alongside Owen. Eriksson was rescued from a similar miscalculation in the World Cup game against Argentina when injury to Owen Hargreaves forced a rethink which brought Scholes into a more central, and relevant, role. Last night, the catalyst for change was not injury but appalling embarrassment.

The choice of Heskey before Alan Smith, Owen's biting partner in last month's friendly against Portugal, was particularly self-defeating. His relationship with Owen was as fleeting as that of commuters bumping against each other on a platform of Victoria station, the train having left without them. The moment of victory brought a killing irony. The ball which Owen so hungrily converted was supplied by Scholes ­ from the right.

On the left he had been a marginal presence. After Eriksson was forced to re-jig the side, he became a much greater influence ­ and supplied much of the increased weight of the English effort. Where, though, did this leave the value of Eriksson's approach to the opening stage of a new challenge?

It was, you had to say, back in the disillusionment of England's exit from the World Cup. This was a victory which covered a multitude of flaws which made any talk of England's return to the front rank of the international game the merest fancy.

For Eriksson, it was an escape of the most extraordinary kind. All week he had been besieged by problems from beyond the touchline, and for most of last night's match his crisis was concentrated on football of a disturbing incoherence.

He had escaped again, however, on almost every front. Sir Alex Ferguson's passing local difficulties in Cape Town were a shocking reminder of some of the more hazardous aspects of celebrity, but these days the raging wind of scandal, however contrived, tends to blow somebody somewhere a little advantage.

In this case the beneficiary was Eriksson, who after 48 hours in the spotlight wielded by Ulrika Jonsson no doubt appreciated a little assistance in carrying the load of attention heaped up by what might be loosely termed the sports media.

However, the frenzy of noise and passion generated in the Tehelne pole stadium by Slovakia's relatively brief nationhood ­ not to mention the initial success enjoyed by the gun-happy locals who fired on two of the near 5,000 English visitors to the cold and rain-swept old city ­ did not exactly suggest a soft landing for the beleaguered Swede. Nor did the brisk authority of a Slovakian side which thoroughly deserved the lead which came in the 24th minute from Middlesbrough's Szilard Nemeth. Despite the conditions, the Slovaks seemed interested in passing the ball to each other and making runs beyond the England cover. It was a breath-taking concept which managed thoroughly to confuse England.

A match against the world's 45th-ranked football nation which might have seemed pretty much a formality for Eriksson in his snug corner of the Football Association's sleek offices in Soho Square took on a rather more menacing shape at 4pm when a Uefa official decided that days of torrential rain had not quite made the pitch unplayable. Playable perhaps, but a little too reminiscent of the battlefields of northern France for England's less boisterous spirits.

What wasn't in doubt, for a little while at least, was that the Jonsson-Eriksson pillow talk was a good deal less relevant to the coach's future than the quality of the performance from the team which made such a dispiriting exit from the World Cup three months ago. Some may say that he found another lifeline in Bratislava, but any re-running of the action will carry indictments which, in the long run, he will do well to escape.

There was no shape to his team at the start ­ and at the finish David Seaman's goal was besieged by a team who are never likely to figure in any of the game's serious rankings. Eriksson lived through a desperate night but his troubles are surely far from over.

Michael Owen delivered the reprieve, but it was one of questionable permanence. Macedonia are up next and that is a less re-assuring fact than it should be.