After making sure no one got crocked in the Saturday matches, Sven-Goran Eriksson announced a 23 man squad to face Uruguay midweek. I agree with the writer's assessment that this is a pretty unsurprising roster, bearing in mind injuries to the likes of Owen and Ashley Cole.
As always, the big question will be sorting out the midfield: both who to play on the left and whether or not you can get away with having Gerrard and Lampard in the same midfield with no holding player behind them. With regard to the latter question, I've always felt that you can, provided you are a good enough manager to let Gerrard know what his role will be (after all, he started off at Liverpool as being much more of a holding player, until people realized how dangerous he was in attack.) I suspect the temptation to have both of them in there from the start will keep Michael Carrick out of the starting XI.
Something interesting about the article: apparently the choices of Uruguay and later Jamaica as friendly opponents is motivated by a desire to simulate World Cup group opponents Paraguay and Trinidad. I've always found the logic of this kind of approach to be spurious. Sure, there are similarities in styles based on geographical region, but they are insignificant compared to the strategic preferences of a coach and the abilities of the players he has available to him. (They are also becoming levelled because of the globalization of the game.) Really, what do we learn about Paraguay by playing Uruguay?
The US played Mini-Mes of their 1998 World Cup group by scheduling friendlies against Austria, Macedonia and Kuwait, and look how well that turned out.
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