Glanville Column: Owen's form will be decisive vs Macedonia

At San Siro on Saturday, in the busy European Championship qualifiers, it's bound to be a different Wales from the ill deployed side we recently saw in Belgrade, where their manager Mark Hughes so fatally got things wrong.

But this time he should have big John Hartson back to play his one man band role up front, rather than the inadequate Nathan Blake, and that will make a difference as massive as Hartson itself in a game Wales can ill afford to lose.

Should they do so, they would still surely attain second place in the group behind the Italian, but that of course would mean the play offs, rather than automatic qualification for the finals in Portugal.

Wales won't have the electric Craig Bellamy on the right flank; nor did Newcastle when they abjectly lost at home and succumbed on penalties last week to Partizan Belgrade, and followed that up with a defeat at Gallowgate by Birmingham City.

But Robert Earnshaw, that dynamic little Cardiff City striker, is perfectly at home on the right flank as he showed us in the mere 13 minutes Hughes allowed him in Belgrade.

Italy? Their 1-0 win against Germany away in that friendly was a triumph of defence football, featuring the many saves of that excellent keeper, Gigi Buffon.

Germany's own keeper, Oliver Kahn, lamented that were his team needed so many chances to score, and still couldn't, Italy just went one-two-three and put their best chance away. This after fluid combination between Alex Del Piero, Francesco Totti and the scorer, Bobo Vieri.

But it seems very unlikely that Totti will have recovered from his bruised thigh in time to play, and there is no one who can quite do what he does with such versatility, floating between midfield and attack.

Italy can of course call on Fippo Inzaghi, who didn't look too sharp in the playing for Milan in Monaco last week in the meaningless Super Cup, which his team won 1-0 against Porto, but he has the pace and the control.

The resourceful young Danny Gabbidon of Cardiff City - like Earnshaw - will need to be at his best, the more so as his likely colleague in central defence, Robert Page, has the experience but lacks the pace which is such a feature of Gabbindon's game.

Wales as we know sensationally and deservedly beat Italy 2-1 in Cardiff, but neither Totti nor Vieri was playing in that game. And the Welsh need that long ball to Hartson tactic since they still lack of the likes of an Ivor Allchurch in midfield, Robbie Savage and Mark Pembridge being scrappers rather than creators, Savage, who denied on Saturday night that he was leaving Birmingham for Everton, was in the were at Newcastle when the referee swung his whistle arm back caught him in the face and inadvertently, one assumes, knocked him flat.

Jokingly, Alan Shearer of Newcastle extracted the referee's own red card and showed it to him!

England play in Macedonia and one trusts will deliver an definitely better performance than the inept one they gave at Southampton in the previous meeting, when with the complicity of David Seaman's clumsy goalkeeping, they were humiliatingly pegged to a 2-2 draw.

Michael Owen, right back to form with a couple of goals against Everton last Saturday, could be decisive, and I hope Wayne Rooney, still only 17, who looked so sharp and intelligent in that Merseyside Derby, will line up beside him. Paul Scholes?

A bone of contention indeed between Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United - currently under withering fire in David Beckham's new autobiography, and England's Sven Goran Eriksson.

Ferguson is railing against Eriksson because, he says of the physical condition in which Scholes - who has for some time needed a hernia operation - returned from the recent 3-1 win over Croatia in Ipswich. Eriksson rejoins that he kept his promise not to use Scholes for the whole game and subbed him after 67 minutes.

But Fergie has from in this respect. Remember how last season he denied Scholes to England, only to field him with United a couple of days before the England match? These are indeed turbulent times for Fergie, presently embroiled in a stand off with the millionaire Irish co-owner of a racehorse for which Fergie demands huge breeding fees, though he seemingly never paid a penny for his co-ownership.

Chelsea have now added Harnan Grespo and Claud Makelele to their formidable roster; but does Ambramovic's money guarantee success?

Not if the defence makes the shocking kind of howler with which as experienced an international as Marcel Desailly presented Blackburn with a goal in 20 seconds at Stamford Bridge last Saturday inexplicably keeping a ball in play and letting it for Matt Jansen to run on an and make a a well taken chance for Andy Cole.

But Adrian Mutu, scoring once again, looks a very profitable acquisition. Note that England's Joe Cole got on only for the last 10 minutes which will probably confirm Eriksson in his odd determination to use his gifted player so sparingly for England.