Capello ponders Walcott worth as England face heat in Zagreb

Fabio Capello has not watched the video of England's 2-0 defeat to Croatia in Zagreb 23 months ago, only, he said in his halting English, "the highlights". Those of us at the game struggle to recall any highlights from that night when England played 3-5-2 for the only time in their recent history and to disastrous effect. A night when Scott Parker started the game and Kieran Richardson finished it and the whole Steve McClaren regime began to disintegrate.

Tonight's 2010 World Cup qualifier against Croatia is the match upon which many will make a judgement about Capello for the time being, at least because the symmetry with McClaren's time in charge offers a perfect means of comparison with the past. It was, lest we forget, Capello who chose that England should play Croatia this early because September was the time that he believed his players would be at their freshest. Yesterday, on the eve of the game in which he will be without the injured Steven Gerrard and Owen Hargreaves, he was asked whether he still thought that was a good idea. "I'm not a magician," he said with a shrug.

When McClaren came to Croatia in October 2006, he also did so without Gerrard, who was suspended, and Hargreaves and Joe Cole, both injured. He and his assistant, Terry Venables, took the decision to change England's formation against one of the most potent young attacking teams in Europe and were punished accordingly. Capello is renowned as a much more accomplished tactician than his predecessor and it is on nights like these that he is expected to show the English public just what a £6m annual salary gets you in the current managerial market.

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No one, least of all the players themselves, knows what names will be on the tactics board when Capello flips over the sheet a couple of hours before the game tonight. Yesterday evening in the Maksimir Stadium you could only guess what he was thinking, but the signs indicated that he will take the brave step of playing both Theo Walcott and Joe Cole in the same team. What is more, he is considering deploying them in a4-3-2-1 formation as a pair behind Wayne Rooney. A formation that, with different personnel, proved less than an overwhelming success when Capello tried it against the Czech Republic last month.

There are, of course, no guarantees that this is the way that Capello will decide to play tonight. He said that he was concerned about Croatia's potency from dead balls – which is why England have spent much of the last three days preparing for them. He also mentioned the threat that Croatia possess on the counter-attack and, of course, the challenge that Luka Modric presents. "Modric is a very difficult player," he said. "The movement is very dangerous because somebody has to follow the movement of the players. The game he played [for Tottenham] against Chelsea he played like a second forward. Before he played like a midfielder. This is more dangerous because, sometimes, he arrives in the box. We have to check him."

Tonight's formation will evidently be selected with Modric in mind, although Capello assured everyone that he would not be repeating McClaren's stunt of using three centre-backs. "I always study opponents and I think also that when we play we have to impose our style," the England manager said. "We have to respect the opponents, but we have to impose our style."

Playing a relatively untried formation would require discipline from Walcott (only three England caps so far) and Joe Cole (shouted at by Capello for moving out of position against Andorra on Saturday), not to mention David Beckham, who would play as part of a more defensive midfield three. The pace of Walcott and the form that Cole has shown over the last two England games must be a tempting combination for Capello, but it does risk Rooney becoming isolated and losing his effectiveness.

Whatever team Capello plays, the shape of his side, he said yesterday, was crucial. "I saw the games the Croatia team played in the European Championship," he said. "I saw a strong team who played fantastic counter-attacks. We have to stay in good positions on the pitch at all times. This is very, very important. If you don't have good balance on the pitch, they [Croatia] are very dangerous on the counter-attack."

John Terry described Capello as having "the same kind of aura as [Jose] Mourinho" and there has never been any shortage of confidence from the Italian that he knows what he is doing. "He's got that real confidence and slight arrogance about him that all top managers have," Terry said. The England captain also seemed to stop himself mid-sentence when he began talking about his side aiming to start the game strongly and get at Croatia early – almost as if he thought he had given just a little of the game plan away.

For most of the country this will be the game upon which Capello will be judged, although the man himself sees it otherwise. Would this fixture define him? "If you want," he said. "It's the second game of the run [qualifiers]. The second game. We play against Ukraine and Belarus, and it's important that I win those. We have to play a lot of games. This is an important game psychologically because we lost the last two games [against Croatia], but I don't talk about the games that we lost. I always speak about the future. The future is the next game. For me, the way is very long."