James Lawton in Bratislava: He may not be for cracking but is the coach geared for survival?

Eriksson needs to echo Munich triumph as media spotlight distracts from England's first step towards Portugal finals

The body language of Sven Goran Eriksson was eloquent yesterday as he stood in the Slovan Stadium under a softly weeping, low-slung Slovakian sky and wondered quite how much fury his scorned mistress Ulrika Jonsson will pour, for her price of more than half a million pounds, into the pages of a national newspaper over the next few days. A man of the world if ever there was one, Eriksson kept up a remarkable front when facing a barrage of cameras and a stream of searching questions about the possibility that Jonsson's version of their pillow talk will drive him out of office.

But his face was taut and from time to time his shoulders slipped down just perceptibly. At one point he uttered one of his classic stabs at common sense, saying: "It's not very productive to have concerns about things you cannot do anything about." So why did he look like somebody who at any moment might be handed a blindfold and a cigarette?

In similar circumstances another field commander of English forces, the Duke of Wellington, commanded his former mistress to "publish and be damned". That, in so many carefully coded words, is what Eriksson is saying here, but with the concession that there could come a point quite soon when the pressure on his private life becomes unsupportable.

That certainly seemed to be the implication when he said: "It's worth a lot of things to be England manager and sometimes you have to pay the price and up to now I've been willing to pay the price. As long as I'm willing I'm happy to do the job..."

As the Football Association hierarchy of the chief executive, Adam Crozier, his deputy Paul Barber, and the international affairs director, David Davies, watched the grilling, Eriksson let that particular train of thought trail away. However, as he was repeatedly turned away from any hope of concentrating on tonight's European Championship qualifier, he again raised the possibility that he might quite soon reach the point where that price had indeed become too high. "It's like an old footballer between the ages of 35 and 40 who wakes up one morning and suddenly says, 'I can't do this any more'. I've been doing this job for a long time now and I've never had that feeling, and I hope it doesn't happen."

No doubt his FA bosses would have preferred a more emphatic rejection of the threat of Eriksson's trial by kiss-and-sell, but in the circumstances it was impossible not to admire this latest example of Scandinavian cool. Whatever the growing doubts about his football instincts – the strong belief that he will again play Paul Scholes out of position on the left and prefer the much-tried Emile Heskey to the richly promising Alan Smith up front is cause for fresh concern – Eriksson's urbanity under fire yesterday made the flailings of some his predecessors seem pitiful indeed. Sir Bobby Robson got so agitated at one critical press conference he attempted to leave via a Wembley broom cupboard. Graham Taylor ranted – while wired up for a documentary – that match officials had cost him his job Glenn Hoddle was finally submerged by a wave of crackpot religion. Kevin Keegan broke down under the pressure.

Eriksson made it clear enough that he wasn't for cracking. But is geared for survival? He said: "I have always believed that the all-important thing for a football manager is results, and if I have problems it might be that I'm at fault or the way things are in the country where I'm working." Translation: bedding Ulrika Jonsson wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done and particularly in a country where the obsession with other people's sex lives is not so much a national trait as a great engulfing sadness.

What is plain enough is that Eriksson desperately needs a few echoes of his greatest triumph for England in Munich 13 months ago, when Germany were beaten 5-1 and it seemed – less than a year before the victims made still another World Cup final appearance and his team slunk away from the quarter-final embarrassment against Brazil – that the nation's most bitter football rivalry had been utterly transformed.

Victory over the 45th-ranked Slovakia would obviously not begin to rank with the triumph in Bavaria, but a show of conviction – and the most practical form of support for the embattled manager from his players – would provide vital ballast in a weekend filled with hideous portents, not least for domestic serenity back home in his Regent's Park mansion. His live-in partner, Nancy, is guaranteed, whatever the result here, not to have laughing eyes while scanning the Sunday morning prints. Defeat by Slovakia, in that last context, is probably at this point a little too depressing for Eriksson to contemplate.

His uneasiness on the strictly football front was telegraphed a little by his reference to the fact that his Swedish compatriots merely drew here in their World Cup qualifying campaign and the Czech Republic recently experienced much difficulty in scoring the first goal against the Slovaks.

Eriksson was candid enough about the need to win against teams like Slovakia and, on Wednesday night in Southampton, Macedonia. Turkey, the World Cup semi-finalists, will certainly be eager to profit from any English mishap. "I'm just happy the competitive football has started," said Eriksson. "I haven't talked to my players about anything but football – I don't really think they are interested in my private life – and I think we have worked well this week, though not so good today because of the poor quality of the pitch. I'm very confident that we will get a good result."

That feeling was perhaps not universal in the cold and drizzly streets of Bratislava, where some of the less uplifting elements of English support were visible, which gave a disturbing hint that we might just be a hellish weekend cocktail of both English prurience and mindless hooliganism.

Such a combination might just nudge Eriksson into that old pro's realisation that he has been doing something for too long and at too high a price. Privately, Eriksson has expressed fears about the extent of Jonsson's candour in her forthcoming revelations and the degree of compromise it will demand between his hatred of intrusion into his private life and his oft-stated pride in being the coach of England.

The official FA line is that Eriksson will tough out the next few days because, as one top official said last night: "He just loves the job so much and is determined to accomplish his goals. He believes England have the potential to beat anyone in the world and he will be sickened if he feels he has to walk away from something he has always wanted. The feeling at the FA is that he is going to see it through."

It is a noble intent but then nobility has known smoother passages than the one Sven Goran Eriksson faces this weekend. Sophisticated and secure in his own values he may be, but there were times yesterday when he showed a flash of apprehension about the extent of the challenge he now faces.

Not, of course, against the mediocre footballers of Slovakia. But the eternal, and in this case financially opportunistic, wrath of a woman scorned.