PULL THE SHEET UP AND YOUR TOES get cold. Pull it down and your top half is exposed. John Toshack, the Wales manager, was talking about the problems of managing Wales on limited playing resources, but in a different way, his analogy applied to England.

Change the team to bring the best out of David Beckham and questions, legitimately, are asked about whether Wayne Rooney’s effectiveness is being compromised (which would be an unforgivable mistake). Balance the midfield and where do you fit Rooney alongside Michael Owen? In England’s case, it appears, there are gaps, however great the expanse of bed linen.

England’s best XI? Sven-Göran Eriksson claims to know the team, and the formation, that should start next summer’s World Cup finals, but there were a thousand conflicting voices in the pubs and on the airwaves on Saturday evening. You would hear half a dozen differing opinions if you opened the door to the England dressing-room.

About the only issue that everyone agrees upon — apart from the fact that Rooney is one of football’s greatest talents at 19 — is that Eriksson’s substitutions, utterly baffling at Euro 2004, remain as hard to interpret as the Tibetan poetry he is said to enjoy. For a head coach who prides himself on his clarity of thought at times of great stress, he does a good impression of Claudio Ranieri, the man who could tinker his way out of a 3-0 lead.

The Swede’s replacement of Shaun Wright-Phillips in the 68th minute after a spell when the Chelsea winger had finally brought some width to England’s performance was unfathomable. His habit of shuffling his players around — shoving Steven Gerrard out to the left wing and Rooney to the right in this case — unbalanced his team and gave impetus to Wales’s late but vain push for an equaliser. “

Eriksson does seem to have an extraordinary knack for turning a decent England performance into a poor one with his substitutions,” Gary Lineker observed wisely yesterday, although the former England striker was taking the argument too far in criticising the introduction of Owen Hargreaves. Someone had to try to reinforce a disintegrating midfield in which Frank Lampard lacked form, as he has done all season, while Gerrard, who has been sidelined with a calf strain, lacked fitness.

Eriksson’s changes convey a message of “hang on for dear life”, even when two of his replacements, Kieran Richardson and Jermain Defoe, are attack-minded. “We wanted to bring on another striker (Defoe) and take Rooney outside with his pace and kill the game,” Eriksson said of his decision to withdraw Wright-Phillips. Instead, it reinvigorated a match that England would have done well to throw away, given that Wales did not have a single shot on target in the second half.

While his changes were strange, Eriksson’s starting XI at least made some sense. Owen’s suspension gave the Swede the opportunity to experiment with a 4-3-3 formation and to look at something different. The obvious beneficiary was Beckham, who has been talking about playing central midfield for years and, increasingly, coming infield even when not selected there. His habit of roaming inside was high on the agenda when Eriksson sat down with his three senior midfield players on Tuesday night, as was the inability of Gerrard and Lampard to form an effective central partnership.

“After looking at the videos of the Denmark game, I decided that we had to look at it,” Eriksson said. “When we get into problems, all three of them do the same kind of job. Because of that I took them in on Tuesday and said, ‘We have to sort it out, once and for ever.’ ”

Whether this formation proves for ever, or even lasts until the game against Northern Ireland in Belfast on Wednesday, remains to be seen, but Beckham will not easily be shifted. The captain was still beaming on Saturday, happy to have seized centre stage with a busy performance notable for a couple of perfect passes including the flighted ball out to Wright-Phillips, whose low cross was turned in by Joe Cole, via a deflection, in the 54th minute.

“I enjoyed that role today,” Beckham said. “I get more of the ball there and that means I can play different passes, like the ones to Wrighty and Joe Cole. When you’ve got someone like Shaun who can frighten defenders with his pace, he’s definitely a great outlet for me.

“Rio (Ferdinand) said he felt it was a lot more steady today. If that’s what that role can give the central defenders, it’s great. The midfield was a lot more disciplined. Maybe halfway through the second half we went a little bit because tiredness came into it.”

Whether it would work against Brazil is another matter entirely.

First, Eriksson must concentrate on making the most of England’s strengths and, to that end, he will have to find a place for Owen whatever the formation. Owen might have found his pace negated by Wales’s deep-lying defence on Saturday, but with Rooney drawn deep by his love of creating as well as scoring, Eriksson needs someone in the penalty area. Rooney and Owen up front through the middle remains England’s most potent attacking force by far, but for it to work, Gerrard will have to accept the holding role and Beckham will have to stay wide on the right. Which brings us back to where Eriksson started at the beginning of last week.

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