Stuart Pearce, the England Under-21 head coach, will give Steven Taylor, his captain, and Gabriel Agbonlahor, the striker, the opportunity to prove their fitness before tonight’s pivotal European Under-21 Championship qualifying match against Portugal, but will tell his patched-up team to set an example to the seniors and seize the day.

A sixth successive victory tonight will leave Pearce’s team virtually certain of qualifying for the play-offs that precede the 2009 tournament in Sweden and, just as Steve McClaren’s men know that they could clinch their place in a leading finals by avoiding defeat against Croatia at Wembley 24 hours later, Pearce will underline the importance of tournament football to his young players.

To that end, he will hope that Taylor, the Newcastle United defender, and Agbonlahor, the Aston Villa forward who scored in Friday’s 2-0 win over Bulgaria, can recover from the back and knee injuries that left them doubtful last night. Pearce, already without eight players because of injury, has the option of dropping Tom Huddlestone, the Tottenham Hotspur midfield player, back into defence, with Matt Derbyshire, of Blackburn Rovers, capable of playing as a lone striker.

“The players’ wellbeing is of paramount concern to us,” Pearce said. “They won’t be playing unless we feel they are 100 per cent fit. We are doing everything we can to have them available for us.

“They [Taylor and Agbonlahor] are big players at this level, their performances have been outstanding during the campaign and they will be missed if they are not playing, but it gives someone else an opportunity. We’ve come up against it here with the amount of players missing, but that is something we just have to deal with. We’ve had a lot of injuries, but what has impressed me is the players’ attitude in wanting to be here.”

Pearce believes that the experience the under-21s gained in reaching the European Championship semi-finals in the Netherlands this year will stand them in great stead for the pressure they could encounter if, and when, they are involved in the kind of occasion facing McClaren’s players tomorrow.

“It’s an awful feeling to miss out,” the former England captain, who was in the team that failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, said. “It was even worse seven or eight months later when the finals kicked off in America and you’re not there. You realise then that it’s a short career.

“I need to give another group of players, plus those who were there in Holland, that experience again. We only do that if we get out of the group and win the play-offs. It was a great ‘bedding’ for us, an experience which is a higher pressure than you ever feel as a player. The pressure doesn’t get cranked up any higher than playing in a World Cup or European Championship for your country.”

Teams

Portugal (possible; 4-4-2): Ricardo Batista – Nuno Coelho, Antunes, Gonçalo Brandão, Vieirinha – Pelé, J Moreira, P Machado, V Fernand - P Soares, Y Djalo.

England (possible; 4-5-1): J Hart (Manchester City) – C Gardner (Aston Villa), S Taylor (Newcastle United), D Wheater (Middlesbrough), J Mattock (Leicester City) – T Walcott (Arsenal), L Cattermole (Middlesbrough), T Huddlestone (Tottenham Hotspur), F Muamba (Birmingham City), J Milner (Newcastle United) – G Agbonlahor (Aston Villa).

Referee: I Vad (Hungary).

PW D L Pts

England 5 5 0 0 15
Portugal 4 3 0 1 9
Montenegro 6 2 0 4 6
Bulgaria 4 1 0 3 3
Ireland 3 0 0 3 0

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