'Mentally fragile French could fold fairly easily' says positive Palmer

Lock who plays club rugby in France believes fast start from Martin Johnson's men can seal place in last four

Tom Palmer has urged England to prey on France's mental fragility in Saturday's Rugby World Cup quarter-final. The England lock has spent the last two years playing for Stade Français and understands the French psyche better than anyone in the red rose squad.

France, who lost to Tonga last weekend, appear to be in a state of disarray, with coach Marc Lièvremont openly criticising his players and vice versa.

Comparisons have been drawn between Lièvremont's squad and the French football team, who went on strike at the 2010 World Cup after Nicolas Anelka was sent home.

The French players are understood to have held a summit meeting yesterday to try to bring a sense of unity to the squad ahead of the encounter with England.

Palmer believes that could make them dangerous – but he also knows how damaging a fast start from England could be to their belief. "From my knowledge of French guys and what their psyche is like, it tends to be that if things don't go their way or things aren't going too well they do make quite a lot out of it," said Palmer. "It happens to the French. Look at their football team in the World Cup as well.

"In my experience, especially my first season in France at Stade, we weren't particularly mentally strong as a group and if things started to go wrong then we folded fairly easily.

"You can just feel [in] your team [when] people aren't supporting you, people aren't talking, people just go missing a little bit. But France will be hugely committed to this match. They'll see this as another chance.

"Things haven't gone too well, they lost two games in the pool, but they are still in a quarter-final. All that's come before them is kind of irrelevant now because it's kind of a one-off match. I imagine that they understand that.

"It's a huge motivation for them. It would be foolish of us to think, 'They lost to Tonga, they'll lose again'. They'll raise their game for us."

England will need to do the same after battling their way into the quarter-finals with a 16-12 victory over Scotland, in which Palmer made a telling contribution off the bench.

"Every time we play against France it's a tough match. Just look at the history of games between the teams – it will be exactly the same on Saturday," said Palmer.

"I think there is more to come from England. The best we've played in the whole period was that [warm-up] game against Ireland and we need to go and replicate that. The second half against Scotland we actually played some very good stuff."

The England manager, Martin Johnson, named his side to play France overnight, with Jonny Wilkinson set to continue at fly-half.

Wilkinson eased concerns over an elbow injury by taking part in training, and Mike Tindall is expected to shake off a dead leg. If Tindall does miss out, Johnson can choose either Toby Flood at inside centre or return to Shontayne Hape.