Midfield trio are England's irreplaceable backbone

Sven Goran Eriksson has revealed that Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes and David Beckham are the irreplaceable spine of his England team and will not be dropped under almost any circumstances.

The Swede made it clear that there is effectively just one midfield place available in his England side for the foreseeable future – and that is on the problem left flank.

The England manager would almost certainly add Michael Owen to the list of players whose places are sacrosanct, while Sol Campbell and Rio Ferdinand would also come close. He is determined to build strong foundations for his team, irrespective of dips in form, as he looks to take England to the Euro 2004 finals.

England's next qualifiers are in Liechtenstein on 29 March and at home to Turkey on 2 April and they have also added a friendly international against Serbia and Montenegro on 3 June at Leicester, before the home qualifier against Slovakia on 11 June at Middlesbrough.

"In every great team you need to have a base," Eriksson said. "You can't change 11 players every time you come to pick a squad because then you will have no continuity. You must have a base and then maybe you can change two or three in a party of 22, depending on their form for their club."

The Swede added: "If you talk about the base of the England team, then you're talking about people like Beckham, Scholes and Gerrard. Even if they are not doing always exceptionally well for their clubs, I'll pick them because I think those three, for example, are the base in our midfield."

England have added the Serbia and Montenegro match to help cope with the month between the end of the domestic season and the Slovakia match. They will play a friendly in South Africa, have a training camp at La Manga, then take on the former Yugoslavia.

Eriksson had been looking for eastern European opposition in an attempt to prepare for the Slovakia fixture, as the Slovaks pushed England close in Bratislava in October before losing 2-1. "This team is technically very adept," he said. "With their style of play, they will be ideal opponents for us as we prepare for our qualification match at home to Slovakia the following week."