James Lawton: Eriksson's 'luck' is all to do with sound judgement

The England coach it seems is not so much a football general as a man who just as easily might have broken the bank at Monte Carlo

In the proper, self-respecting English way, a lot of us appear eager to explain why it is that a Swedish football coach has achieved the automatic World Cup qualification which nine months ago, in native hands, seemed about as likely as scheduled inter-planetary travel. It could not, obviously, have anything to do with the possibility that we really did need an outsider's help.

It turns out, you might have guessed, that Sven Goran Eriksson's football erudition is a pretty small part of the story. Much more important is the fact that he is lucky. Referees invariably favour his cause. The ball rolls for him slavishly. It is only surprising that rabbit's feet do not actually pop out of his designer suits at moments of extreme excitement like the one at Old Trafford when David Beckham's free-kick sailed into the back of the Greek net. Eriksson, it seems, is not so much a football general as a man who just as easily might have broken the bank at Monte Carlo.

However, in deference to any suggestion that Eriksson has not had a fair assessment, that his performance in getting England to the big tournament has been a little too glibly and simplistically categorised, we should maybe list some other, admittedly peripheral but not totally irrelevant, factors. They, along with outrageous good fortune, may just have aided Mr Eriksson in his task.

The first one is that he has been intelligent enough not to gabble into microphones at every opportunity, a decision which means that even though he is nine months into the job we still do not know whether he thinks the handicapped kid in a wheelchair at the touchline is paying his price for a spot of genocide in a previous life.

Though Eriksson has not displayed any slick understanding of tactical formations, electing, for example, to use the back-four formation that has won France the World Cup and the European Championship and made Manchester United untouchable in domestic football, he has given Michael Owen the confidence to confirm his status as an international striker of the highest class. Perhaps we should give a nod here to Swedish nous in view of the fact that Owen's two previous English England managers competed in their reluctance to play the little fellow, Glenn Hoddle doubting that he was a "natural goalscorer" and Kevin Keegan awarding him, at best, half a game.

Another couple of small brownie points for the Swede: he has never played Steve McManaman at right wing-back or Gareth Southgate in midfield. Naturally, this lack of originality has made certain experts restless, but Eriksson, with breath-taking complacency, says that he has always thought it quite a good idea to put players in their normal positions.

He seems to think this provides a real boost to confidence and thus performance. It is also highly unlikely that he would have played Matt Le Tissier in his first competitive international against Italy.

In choosing Owen before Andy Cole, Eriksson has not yet asserted that the Manchester United player needs five chances to score a goal. Nor has he installed a faith healer as a key element in big match preparation. It is also true that as of now, he has no plans to stretch into book form a detailed accunt of what he said to Steve Gerrard when the young Liverpool player apologised for making a late run at the alcopops.

All this, of course, is fairly lightweight stuff when set against the imperatives of tactical innovation and yesterday the point had to be made that in both selection and tactics Eriksson was falling short, a verdict made unanswerable by the fact that England had merely taken 16 out of a possible 18 points in six qualifying games. Nor should we put too much stock on the fact that Eriksson appears to be universally liked and respected, if not adored, by his players.

When you really get down to it, the important point is that the only thing that really separates Eriksson from his predecessors is good luck. Beside that, intelligence, consistency, 20 years of success in European football and a lack of ego are plainly by the by.

Certainly we should not sniff at the value of good fortune. Sir Alf Ramsey had quite a bit of it when England won the World Cup after mediocre performances in the group games. Take away a Bobby Charlton thunderbolt against Mexico and England were felt not to have done anything to threaten the hopes of Argentina before their captain, Antonio Rattin, was controversially sent off in the quarter-final. The Russian linesman also helped in the final when he awarded Geoff Hurst his eternally debated goal.

Supporters of Bayern Munich might also like to join in the debate. They saw Manchester United beat their team in the European Cup final of 1999 after being led, if not totally outplayed, for 90 minutes. Perhaps the only rival to those two occasions in the history of English football was United's first European Cup win in 1968, when United's Alex Stepney made a point-blank save from the great Eusebio on the brink of extra-time. Did that make Sir Matt Busby a lucky manager? Or someone for whom players would run endlessly, as those of Ramsey and Ferguson also did, to produce a result?

The question is only worth asking on a day when we have to strain to give a lucky old Swede his due.