O'Neill tips Sutton for place in England squad

The Celtic manager Martin O'Neill believes that Chris Sutton could have played his way into Sven Goran Eriksson's England plans. The Swede will name his squad for their final World Cup qualifier with Greece on Sunday and the in-form striker may be a surprise choice.

Liverpool's Michael Owen is ruled out through injury and his club-mate Robbie Fowler is suffering from a lack of confidence in front of goal.

Eriksson was in Glasgow to watch Sutton's display in the 1-0 Champions' League victory over Porto on Tuesday. Although the 28-year-old did not manage to hit the net, his battling performance alongside the scorer Henrik Larsson can have only improved his chances of an England call-up.

"Larsson's whole performance was sensational," said O'Neill yesterday. "He and Sutton were absolutely immense. Mr Eriksson was watching and he was bound to have been impressed, but all the players were terrific."

The Irishman also admitted that viewing the match from the stands was the most harrowing experience of his managerial career. O'Neill was serving a one-match ban from the touchline and was not even allowed to speak to the players an hour before kick-off or during the game itself. "That was as desperate a 90 minutes as I've ever endured," admitted O'Neill. "The players put a great big effort in and it was great to win the game, although it was nail-biting towards the end."

The Porto coach Octavio Machado admitted that his reason for playing three central defenders was to stop the threat of Celtic's dynamic duo. He said: "It was necessary to play the three defenders at the back because Celtic are so dangerous in attack and cause all kinds of problems.

"They have a very strong striker in Sutton and everybody knows about Henrik Larsson, so it was necessary to adapt to the way that the two strikers play and man-to-man marking would have been very risky."

But despite the defeat, the Portuguese club are still on level points with Celtic and Machado was not too downhearted. He said: "On both occasions against Celtic and Rosenborg we were away from home and I think the players acquitted themselves admirably."