Upheaval in Estonia camp gives hosts little to fear

A sense of perspective is always fairly useful when it comes to discussing England and from Steve McClaren's north-east backyard comes one from Tim Carter, who works for Sunderland as a goalkeeping coach, a job he replicates for Estonia, having met Mart Poom on Wearside a few years ago. "England could lose another 100 players to injury and still have a squad bigger than ours," Carter says. "That's not being disrespectful to Estonia, that's the reality. The contrast is massive.

"What you have to remember is that for a lot of these lads they will be going from playing in front of 80 people on a weekend in Tallinn or wherever in the Estonian league, to 80,000 at Wembley."

So at least for the first part of the forthcoming double-header, England can relax about Michael Owen, Emile Heskey, Owen Hargreaves and all the rest. Their involvement should not be necessary to overcome an Estonia team that has been in "upheaval" since the two countries met in early June in Tallinn. McClaren entered that match with his future prospects in doubt. The previous qualifier had been the turbulent, unconvincing win over Andorra and a similarly bleak effort against Estonia could have been seen as breaking point.

However, Owen was declared fit, David Beckham played and England won 3-0. Israel and Russia have been beaten since. But for Estonia, that England game spelled the end of their young Dutch coach, Jelle Goes. By mutual consent he went off to fill the role of director of football at CSKA Moscow. In his place for the remainder of the campaign came the 60-year-old Dane Viggo Jensen.

A former manager of Odense and Silkeborg, Jensen was once on the books of Bayern Munich as a player. He inherited an Estonia side with no points and no goals in seven games but against Andorra in Tallinn there at last came both in a 2-1 win. Defeat in Croatia followed yet, on the night England were beating Russia, Estonia took a creditable 1-1 draw away from Macedonia. Raio Piiroja was Estonia's scorer in Skopje and he will be fit for Wembley. However, star striker Andres Oper, who missed the first England game, has been ruled out for Wembley.

"The Andorra win was a very poor game of football," Carter says. "But against Macedonia, where we were down to our third-choice keeper, we scored first and we have gone on to win it. Skopje's not an easy place to go, it's not even an easy place to get to, especially from Estonia. But it's still a point in international football."

There does not appear to be great expectation of getting another at Wembley, although Carter says this is the fixture on which the entire country has been fixated since the draw.

"Everything has revolved around England at Wembley," he says, "but it's a monumental task. What we don't want is for players to go there just for the experience of it, we can't roll over and we still could have one big performance in us. We're not going there to lie down.

"England beating Russia was a massive result and I was speaking to one of the Croatia delegates who said he hoped [the group] was all sorted before they go to Wembley."

In preparing Estonia, Carter shares his memories of the stadium. He has been there three times as a player: in the Centenary Cup when Sunderland lost to Wigan on penalties; as part of the Sunderland squad that lost the 1990 play-off to Swindon; and with the same squad who then lost the 1992 FA Cup final to Liverpool. On reflection, maybe he would be best keeping those to himself.