Fabio Capello's team may have created a little bit of history, but he revealed yesterday that he intends to use England's forthcoming friendly fixtures to experiment and give opportunities to younger players to show that they are ready to step into the big time.

With England top of their qualifying group after Wednesday's 3-1 triumph against Belarus in Minsk had given them four successive victories at the start of a World Cup campaign for the first time in their history, Capello is preparing to break one of the oldest managerial tenets by making extensive changes to a winning team. Ashley Young, Gabriel Agbonlahor and David Wheater are likely to be called up to the squad that will take on Germany in Berlin on November 19.

It is more than five months until England's next qualifier, against Ukraine at Wembley on April 1, and Capello wants to use the intervening period to increase his options for the challenges ahead. Although the shape of his preferred starting line-up has become increasingly clear, places in the squad are up for grabs and potential weaknesses remain, particularly at the back.

The England manager is concerned about the lack of experienced cover for David James in goal and limited options at full back, which could lead him to give opportunities to Joe Hart, Micah Richards and Stephen Warnock in the friendlies away to Germany and Spain - the latter provisionally scheduled for February - and at home to Slovakia on March 28.

“For me the friendly matches are an experiment to decide the best XI,” Capello said. “I needed to experiment when I arrived and will do that in the next three games. I need players with confidence, players that have had more games with seniors.

“For this reason we will do the next game with new players. I know a lot of players and some of them can play in the next game. But I will also try to find some new players as we have to prepare for the future.”

Capello believes England's rapid improvement is largely down to increased confidence, with the Italian eradicating a climate of fear and beginning the process of instilling a winning mentality. “We have the confidence,” Capello said. “Sometimes there have been moments when we have not played so well, but we are always confident of scoring goals to win the game. Confidence is the most important thing for a team.

“It's my job to win. I love to try, always. In my mind I have worked for this for years. I always tried everything to win. I think these players play for their clubs with a winning mentality and you have to transfer that here. I am happy to help them.”

Frank Lampard went as far as to compare the atmosphere in the squad to that at Chelsea, where a culture of competing for honours has been established for several years, and insisted that England should be confident of beating two of the best teams in Europe. “There's nothing to be afraid of when we play Germany and Spain,” Lampard said. “We're a good team and we're confident. We have to look around our own dressing-room and see the quality we have and believe that we can go and beat these teams. We're getting the wins in qualifiers. Now we have a couple of difficult friendlies and we have to kick on.

“We're developing the winning mentality we have at Chelsea, but I don't think we're quite at that level yet. You have to remember that we knocked ourselves down a bit. We didn't qualify for Euro 2008 and we needed to get some confidence back in the team. You can only achieve that through being disciplined and getting results. We're slowly moving up that ladder where we are going to places and getting good results. We're made of stronger stuff now.”

England's success under Capello also brought praise from Lord Triesman, the chairman of the FA. Having criticised fans who booed Ashley Cole after his mistake against Kazakhstan at Wembley six days ago, Triesman said: “It doesn't help and we're beginning to get into winning ways and we've got a manager whose determination to win is brilliant. It's almost intoxicating when you're with him. And you want all of the supporters and all of the things we can do as the FA - provision of medical services, physio services, sports sciences - you want it all lined up to give this the very best chance. And that's what supporters probably want in their heart of hearts as well.”