Taken off at half-time against Manchester United, left out against Swansea and with only one goal - a penalty at that - to show for his efforts so far this season, the midfielder no longer appears such a key player at Stamford Bridge.

His future at international level is similarly insecure, after he was demoted to the bench against Bulgaria at the start of the month - the first time in four years that he had not started a competitive match for his country when available.

So, at 33, is he merely a squad player at Chelsea, with £23.5m summer signing Juan Mata now the leading light in midfield?

There's no questioning the contribution Lampard has made to Chelsea since joining from West Ham. Photo: Getty

The very suggestion rankles with Claudio Ranieri, the man responsible for bringing Lampard to Chelsea in June 2001.

"Trust me, Lampard is still a fantastic player," the Italian, who took over as Inter Milan manager last week, told me.

"Maybe at the moment he is not playing as well as he can, but he is still a big part of Chelsea's future.

"His passing, his shooting, his leadership and his intelligence - they all make him a world-class midfielder."

Ranieri persuaded Chelsea to pay West Ham £11m for Lampard 10 years ago. The fee was ridiculed by many at the time, but has proven an absolute steal, with the midfielder going on to score 116 league goals for the club during the most successful period in their history.

And age should not diminish Lampard's ability too much, according to Ranieri.

"Speed has never been a key part of Frank's game and he has always trained hard and kept in excellent condition," added the Italian, who has also led Valencia, Juventus and Roma during a 24-year managerial career.

"He is a dream in training, a real example for all the other players. I see no reason why he shouldn't still be playing at the top level in his mid or even late 30s."

To do this, Lampard is likely to have to change his game though - a process which already seems to be underway.

At first glance, the player's statistics for this season appear to show a player in decline.

He has scored only one goal, against Norwich, and is having less than a third of the shots per game he did in 2009-10.His shooting accuracy has also declined markedly, with 58% of his attempts finding the target last season, but only 25% so far this term.

But BBC pundit Pat Nevin, twice Chelsea's player of the year in the 1980s, says the stats are actually a result of Lampard changing his role.

Goodbye attacking goalscoring midfielder, hello deeper-lying playmaker.

"Frank is now playing further back and holding the ball, passing neatly and building attacks rather than necessarily finishing them off," Nevin explained.

"People just need to adjust their preconceptions about how he plays."

The adjacent graphic supports this theory. It shows the average position Lampard (number eight) took in the first half of the 3-1 Premier League defeat by Manchester United.

He is deeper than fellow midfielders Juan Mata (10) and Ramires (seven), in a holding role alongside Raul Meireles (16).

In the second half, as Chelsea chased the game, Lampard was withdrawn by manager Villas-Boas and Mata was pushed further up the pitch alongside Fernando Torres (nine), with Nicolas Anelka (39) operating behind the duo.

Nevin says Mata has certainly now taken on Lampard's mantle as Chelsea's foremost attacking midfielder.

"If you play with Torres, you don't play long balls, as Chelsea used to when Didier Drogba was their main striker," said Nevin.

"Torres's angled runs have been exceptional ever since he joined the club, but only now, following Mata's arrival, is there someone to thread balls through to find him.

"That has never been Frank's game and he's having to evolve to find a place in this new side, with its new style of play."

So is the previously prolific Lampard reinventing himself as a deep-lying midfielder, much in the same way Paul Scholes did for Manchester United towards the end of his career?

Nevin thinks so. "Villas-Boas seems to favour a 4-2-3-1 and Frank has the tactical intelligence, vision, passing ability and tackling to be one of those two deep-lying midfielders," he argues.

Coincidentally, this is also the system Fabio Capello has recently favoured for England.

Lampard has said "there's nothing more satisfying in football than proving the critics wrong," and maybe he is about to enjoy that feeling again, for club and country.

England have a 100% goalkicking record in this season's tournament, and most of those 15 kicks have been converted by Flood.

His metronomic boot has brought back memories of Jonny Wilkinson in his pomp, and it's perhaps no coincidence that Flood has recently been working with Wilkinson's long-time mentor, Dave Alred.

"Dave has raised the bar for what we're doing," the Leicester fly-half told BBC Sport at England's Pennyhill Park training base earlier this week.

Wilkinson simply describes Alred as "the best kicking coach in the world".

I hadn't realised the 62-year-old was working with England again until he appeared next to manager Martin Johnson at Twickenham during the crushing 59-13 win over Italy two weeks ago.

A Rugby Football Union spokesman told me he was working with England only as a "consultant", not a full-time employee, and that he wouldn't be available for interview during the team's media sessions.

Instead I met Alred at Wentworth, where he often works with the golfer Luke Donald, and he explained he was working with England on a "temporary arrangement".

"At the moment I've committed to Johnno," he explained. "I've said 'let's get going and sort the details later'. It's all a bit up in the air to be honest, I'll just see what happens.

"The RFU have got a lot of other things crossing their mind right now, like a massive restructuring."

Alred was controversially sacked by the RFU in 2006, along with defensive coach Phil Larder and skills coach Joe Lydon. Sir Clive Woodward, who introduced Alred to the England set-up and has described him as "one of the best coaches I have ever worked with, in any discipline", was heavily critical of the decision.

The RFU made the decision after a comprehensive review of the coaching set-up and insiders suggested the coach was starting to stray from his kicking duties into areas like mental preparation and skills coaching, and even suggested he could be resting on his laurels.

One RFU board member told me Alred was "brilliant, but almost impossible to manage".
The man himself admits the decision hurt him deeply. "The way it was handled, I would be kidding myself if I didn't feel a little bit bitter, being assessed by people that had never seen me operate and never took the time to find out," he said.

He was subsequently replaced as kicking coach by former Bath player Jon Callard, who has now made way for Alred again in the England elite set-up. Callard is now working with the RFU Academy.

Alred was certainly busy after he left the RFU's employ five years ago, coaching golfers Donald and Melissa Reid, working with Woodward at the British Olympic Association and coaching in sports as diverse as Australian Rules Football and judo.

But it's clear that rugby, and goalkicking in particular, remain his greatest passion.
And he's certainly relished his return with England.

"It's been great working with Martin Johnson and his coaches and the players have been fantastically responsive," he explains.

So how exactly did he come to be involved again?

"I was involved in a piecemeal arrangement, working one-on-one with Jonny, and he was available for the Autumn internationals last year," he says. "But when I turned up, Jonny got injured. Toby then asked to work with me and things went from there."

The results have certainly been impressive. Alred has now been working with England since the start of last year's Autumn internationals, and in the six subsequent games the team have slotted 92% of their penalties and conversions (36 from 39).

Those stats compare favourably with last season's Six Nations, when England had just a 65% success rate (17 kicks from 26 attempts).

I should add that most of the kicks in last season's tournament were taken by Wilkinson, and that Alred had still been working with the fly-half at Toulon. But the improvement in Flood's kicking has been particularly marked.

Alred says Flood has been learning the principles that have made Wilkinson so formidable. "As athletes, you don't always get it right, but if you can have a technique where if you don't get it right it STILL goes over, you're much better off," he says.

"That's basically what I've done with Toby, which is what I still do with Jonny. His body does the aiming and his leg is less dominant. It's similar to golf, where there are two parallel lines - one where the body turns towards the target, the other where the ball goes.

"If you apply that to goalkicking and you find that you aim with the body, it still goes over."

Alred says he has long been "fascinated with the reasons why one day people can be sensational and the next perform like a dog" and believes he can apply his principles for performing under pressure to any sport.

This obsession began when he studied performing under pressure for a PhD at Loughborough University.

"I investigated anything that would help to support people performing better under pressure," he says.

Alred played American Football for the Minnesota Vikings and had a low-key career as a rugby player after returning to England in 1979.

 Luke Donald now benefits from Alred's knowledge

His coaching career began when he worked with Bristol full-back Alastair Hignell, the former BBC commentator, and Bath duo Jon Webb and Stuart Barnes during the amateur era.

Woodward recruited him as an England assistant coach, but possibly his biggest break came in 1998, when director of rugby Rob Andrew asked him to come up to Newcastle to work with a promising schoolboy called Jonny Wilkinson.

"It's still a pleasure to work with Jonny and he's still a phenomenal goalkicker, who is eager to improve all the time," Alred says. "You still hear the sighs from the opposition when he comes off the bench, players and coaches saying 'oh no, it's Wilkinson', which is a great tribute to Jonny."

Alred says he still learns new things about coaching and about goalkicking every day.
"I thought my studying and my work would lead me to some answers, but it has only ever led to more questions," he says.

"I have become more hungry for any edge and I'll work in any environment where there's pressure."

And that's a quest that seems to be serving England well at the moment.

This is not what I had expected tennis utopia to look like. Grass is growing on the tramlines, the lines are faded and the nets are held up by plastic carrier bags.

But it is not long before I realise why Judy Murray describes this weekly session as the most inspiring thing she has been involved with all year. In a flash, these shabby courts are transformed by dozens of enthusiastic players of all ages, abilities, sizes and colours.

Parents are feeding sponge balls to small children barely able to see over the net, a coach is demonstrating the service action to a group of attentive pupils, while players across the age spectrum are patiently waiting for their turn in a groundstroke drill. Everyone seems to be having fun and enjoying themselves.

The Saturday session I attended has been going since 2005, when it was set up as a pilot scheme by 'Tennis for Free', a charity founded by the comedian Tony Hawks and businessman Cecil Holloway.

The court time, equipment and coaching cost nothing for the participant and anyone is welcome to join in. There are now 15 of these 'Tennis for Free' sites throughout the country, each with its own team of coaches and helpers. Several have been taken over by the local community, including the one in Merton.

Murray, one of Britain's best coaches as well as the mother of world number four Andy, was completely bowled over when she visited the Joseph Hood Recreation Ground on the eve of Wimbledon last month.

"There were about 100 players taking part and it was absolutely fantastic to see so many people playing tennis," she told me.

"What immediately struck me was how welcoming, sociable and fun it all was. Based on what I know of tennis in this country, that's not always the case. The game here is still very middle class and elitist. I loved the fact that parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters were all joining in and helping. I left absolutely uplifted, thinking 'this is exactly what we need throughout the country'."

Murray, 50, believes schemes like this one are key to unearthing the next British star.

"We should be focusing on making the game as appealing to as many people as possible," she said. "If you grow the recreational base for tennis, you start to produce more and more top players. I would love the Tennis Foundation (the charitable arm of the governing body, the Lawn Tennis Association) to get behind 'Tennis for Free' and support it round the country."

Five years after it started and despite glowing testimonies from the likes of Murray, Greg Rusedski, Richard Krajiceck and Pat Cash, it is surprising the 'Tennis for Free' initiative is still not backed by the LTA, although it does allow 'Tennis for Free' coaches to enrol in its own coaching programmes free of charge.

Upwards of 100 players sometimes take part in the Tennis for Free sessions at Merton

An LTA spokesman told me the governing body was "in discussions" with 'Tennis for Free' officials about funding a further seven sites but that it was awaiting a "business model" from the charity before proceeding.

Hawks, a successful comedian, best-selling author and now the director and star of two upcoming films, says he is growing tired of the vacillations and mixed messages from the governing body.

The LTA counters criticism by pointing to the numerous Beacon sites dotted around the country that provide "affordable, organised and high quality coaching and competitive opportunities" on public courts and have "free elements". It also invests in parks tennis, in conjunction with local councils, although this does not involve free tennis.

Intrestingly, though, Hawks claimed he phoned every Beacon site a few months ago and insisted none of them was aware of provisions for free tennis.

On the evidence of Merton, 'Tennis for Free' is already unearthing fine talents, just as Murray predicted. Sam Kiladejo, 14, is a good example. He has become a county level player and member of Sutton Tennis Academy since attending a 'Tennis for Free' session.

I first visited the Joseph Hood Recreation Ground in 2005, when 'Tennis for Free' was in its infancy, and was so struck by Kiladejo's talent that I wrote this piece about him. Although he was aged only nine, was small and slight, and had played only a couple of times before, he had balletic footwork and excellent hand-eye co-ordination.

Hawks had spotted Kiladejo playing football a few weeks earlier and asked if he wanted to come to a 'Tennis for Free' session. "I didn't really want to, I didn't think tennis was for me," remembered Kiladejo, "but when I started hitting balls I absolutely loved it."

It was fantastic to see the scheme had the potential to unearth such a talent as Kiladejo but I wondered at the time what he would do when he outgrew 'Tennis for Free'. Would he be able to afford to join a club? And would he want to? After all, quality coaching, which is so important, can cost upwards of £20 per hour.

So when I returned to Merton a couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to discover that Kiladejo was not only still playing tennis but was now very good, boasting a powerful array of topspin groundstrokes, stinging serves and solid volleys.

"I was spotted by Paul Jessop (chief executive of 'Tennis for Free'), who took me to Putney Tennis Club for free lessons," said Kiladejo. "Then I got a tennis scholarship to Cheam High School, which means I get weekly sessions at the Sutton academy."

Judy Murray says tennis needs to change its "elitist" image

At Sutton, where former British number one Jeremy Bates runs the coaching set-up, Kiladejo gets one-on-one tuition, fitness training and squad work. So far, so good, but there could be a sting in the tale.

The sessions at Sutton cost almost £25 per hour and Sam's father, Ade, has been made redundant. Ade does not want sympathy or expect a free ride but admits it is going to be tough to finance his son's burgeoning tennis career from now on.

The LTA does run a tennis talent identification scheme and provides financial support for its best young players through the Aegon FutureStars programme. However, this funding is only given to the best players in the country in each age group - and Kiladejo is not one of them. Murray says this is a classic chicken and egg situation.

"It is very difficult to become a top player without coaching, yet only the top players get funding," she said. "This is where the governing body has to look because children with potential should not be disadvantaged."

Kiladejo added: "I do worry about how expensive the sessions are but my dad says he wants to do it. I'm determined to do my best for him."

Buoyed by my experiences in Merton, I decided to visit my local courts in Oaken Grove Park, Maidenhead, later that day.

The contrast with the lively session I had witnessed hours earlier could not have been greater. The courts were deserted and the gates were padlocked shut. I must have visited this park every week for the last six years and never seen anyone playing tennis on these courts, which are in far better condition than the ones in Merton.

The courts in Maidenhead are locked and players have to book and pay to use them

A notice on the fence informed me that the courts were leased from the council by Maidenhead Tennis Club and that I had to call a number to book the courts. The phone was only manned on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, though. Not great if the sun is shining one Saturday and you fancy a game.

I did eventually get through and spoke to a very helpful man called Keith, who explained that the courts had to be charged for so they could be maintained. He added that they had to be locked to avoid vandalism.

Jessop, the chief executive of 'Tennis for Free', said there is evidence that locking courts leads to more vandalism because people feel resentful at being excuded.

More worryingly, there are numerous examples of councils turning courts into skateboard parks. The number of park courts in Britain has dwindled from 30,000 to about 10,000.

It means that schemes like 'Tennis for Free' are more vital than ever in unearthing the British star of the future - and tennis fans like Murray will hope the vibrant scenes she witnessed in Merton are not a one-off.

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At 1600 local time on Friday, South Africa and Mexico will kick off the 2010 World Cup in front of 94,700 fans at Soccer City, Johannesburg, and a global television audience of more than one billion.

With the game now so tantalisingly close, Matthew Booth, Bafana Bafana's towering central defender and talisman, admits to experiencing mixed emotions.

Speaking from the team's hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, he told me: "Part of me wants to get the build up over with and just play football, but another part wants to keep soaking up the excitement and atmosphere."

Booth believes South Africa will confound their doubters at the World Cup

"The Mexico game is vital for gathering momentum," he explains. "If we get out of this group, the euphoria and pandemonium in the streets will carry us through and anything could be possible."

The game will be the first competitive international at Soccer City, the awesome stadium built on the site of Nelson Mandela's homecoming to Soweto in 1990, following 27 years in prison.

Fittingly, the 91-year-old former president will be in the stands on Friday, for the first 15 minutes of the match at least, which will ratchet the emotion up another notch.

The level of excitement in the country already seems to have reached bursting point.
Ten players took part in an open-top bus ride through Sandton, the posh business district of Johannesburg, on Wednesday and 250,000 ecstatic fans turned out to cheer them.

"The whole populus seems to be going crazy for the World Cup," Booth says. "Going to training in our bus has been a fantastic experience, with everyone hooting and waving and willing us on."

The big worry is that the scale of the occasion could get to the players on Friday and they freeze. With Bafana Bafana ranked 86th in the world and their opponents 17th, the match is going to be tough enough anyway.

This is where South Africa's coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, will be so crucial, according to Booth. The Brazilian is the most experienced World Cup coach in history and knows what it's like to win the tournament, having triumphed with his home country in America in 1994.

"I'm sure a lot of the players will be nervous, so to have him at the helm is a very good thing for us," Booth says. "He is extremely calm and collected."

Parreira took over the reins from compatriot Joel Santana in October last year, when Bafana were in the doldrums following a run of eight defeats in nine matches.

Now they're full of confidence and optimism, having won five of their last six games, while going 12 without defeat.

How has Parreira effected such a turnaround?

"He installed immediate confidence in the players, because of his pedigree and motivational skills," Booth explains. "That really was most of his job done.

"He's also tried to bring an element of Brazilianess to the team and we are playing some fantastic football, carpet football, which is a joy to watch."

Every previous World Cup host has progressed to at least to the second round of the tournament and after being drawn with France, Mexico and Uruguay in Group A, the odds are against South Africa maintaining the record.

Yet Booth insists: "I've got total confidence we can progress, because we've turned things around. "If you'd asked me if we could get out of the group two years ago, I would probably have said no in all honesty.

"Now things have changed and I can't wait to prove everyone wrong, not just as a team but as a nation."

Booth promises to be one of the most compelling characters of this World Cup. The 6ft 6in defender is articulate, charismatic and unafraid to voice controversial opinions.
Parreira has transformed South Africa's fortunes since taking over last October

He has already spoken out about the lack of funding in South Africa for football, a predominantly black sport, compared to the traditionally white sports of rugby and cricket.

So the 33-year-old, who was born in the white, middle-class suburb of Fish Hoek, on the outskirts of Cape Town, has become a hero of the townships.

Booth, who is married to the Soweto-born supermodel Sonnia Bonneventia, has become one of the figureheads of this World Cup, taking part in the draw in Cape Town last December and doing numerous interviews with broadcasters from around the world.

It's a potentially wonderful World Cup story but for one, rather large problem - Booth isn't actually in the team at the moment.

Parreira has preferred Aaron Mokoena and Bongani Khumalo in central defence in Bafana's last few matches and is understandably reluctant to change a winning team.

"It doesn't look good for me," Booth admitted, "but I'm not putting my head down, I'm continuing to fight at training and show Mr Parreira that I want a place in the team.

"Who knows what will happen? I've just got to make sure I'm ready for any eventuality."
Booth is desperate to sample the atmosphere of Soccer City again, after getting a taster in the 2-1 win over Colombia in May.

"We were playing in front of 80,000 fans and the atmosphere was electric," he remembers.
"In my opinion it's the world's greatest stadium - it's brand spanking new, is a brilliant design and the atmosphere generated in that melting pot, the calabash, is awesome.

"You've just got to be there to witness it for yourself and I hope a lot of visiting fans get to do just that."

The stadium drips with symbolism. It's situated on the edge of Africa's most famous township, Soweto, and is built on the site of the old FNB Stadium, where Mandela made his homecoming speech in 1990,

The shape and panelled exterior of the stadium is designed to resemble a calabash, a traditional African cooking bowl, the pitch sinks into the ground, apparently evoking an open cast mine, and the players' tunnel is a replica of one of the mine shafts that used to dot this area of Johannesburg.

Booth is convinced Bafana have stars worthy of this historic stadium.

"Everyone knows about Steven Pienaar and I'm sure he can carry his Premier League form into the game and the tournament," he says.

"Then there's Teko Modise, our talented playmaker, who is looking very dangerous, and our keeper, Itumeleng Khune, who is in great form."

Now South Africa is just hoping the players can live up to the scale of the occasion come kick off on Friday.

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To secure their man, the FA also had to take on Franco Baldini, Italo Galbiati, Franco Tancredi and Massimo Neri.

Team Capello was formed in 2001 and boasts a formidable range of skills and personalities.

Together they returned the Scudetto to Roma after an 18-year wait and whipped the underachieving galacticos into title-winning shape at Real Madrid in 2007.

Now they embark on their toughest challenge of all, to end 44 years of World Cup hurt for England.

The 49-year-old is Capello's diametric opposite, an open and charming man whom the players feel able to confide in.

Fitness coach Massimo Neri and goalkeeping coach Franco Tancredi join Capello in training.

French midfielder Olivier Dacourt worked with Capello and Baldini at Roma and says they have a classic good-cop, bad-cop partnership.

"Capello makes you scared, but Franco is a very, very nice man," Dacourt told BBC Sport.

"You speak much more easily with Franco than with Capello, he is very gentle."

Mark Ryan, author of 'Fabio Capello: The Boss', argues that Baldini is essential to the effective functioning of the regime.

"I think he's absolutely massive and Capello might struggle with some of the diplomatic things and human relations without Franco," he told BBC Sport.

"He really is the supreme diplomat and if there's a difficult situation, he's the one who will smooth it over.

"He's very intelligent and perceptive and knows Capello's weaknesses and how to compensate for them."

With his excellent grasp of English, Baldini is also the man Capello uses as his go-between with the media, preferring to keep a distance himself.

Baldini had a decent playing career, including spells at Bari, Bologna and Pescari. One of his first clubs was the unfashionable Campobasso where, in a neat twist of fate, his manager was Tord Grip, the former England assistant.

At the end of his playing career, Baldini became an agent, utilising his scouting and networking skills.

Baldini (left of centre) is Capello's main scout for England.

His first link-up with Capello was at Roma in 1999, where he was technical director, luring a succession of top players, including Gabriel Batistuta, Christian Chivu and Walter Samuel to the Olympic Stadium, as well as unearthing lesser-known gems such as Simone Perrotta and the Brazilian winger Mancini.

Capello still greatly values Baldini's talent-spotting abilities and uses him as his main scout for England. Indeed, Baldini was the first member of the England coaching set-up to truly recognise the international potential of Aston Villa midfielder James Milner, who is now a key part of Capello's World Cup squad.

When I first met Baldini, I was immediately struck by how impeccably turned out and charming he was, and it was no surprise to learn he was a cultured midfielder during his playing days.

However, Grip told me he was also able to look after himself, and this steely side of his character was evident at Roma, when he was one of the key witnesses in the corruption trial of Juventus director Luciano Moggi.

It was at this time that Capello and Baldini had their only major falling out.

When his name was linked with the vacant manager's job at Moggi's Juventus, Capello laughed off the possibility of a move to the Stadio Delle Alpi.

The first Baldini knew of his friend's defection was when he saw him being unveiled by Juve live on television.

They didn't speak for a year after that according to Ryan, but Capello managed to build bridges and persuade Baldini to join him at Real Madrid in 2006. They haven't looked back since.

However, Capello's closest confidante is still his 72-year-old assistant, Galbiati.

They first met in the late 1970s, when Capello was an international midfielder for AC Milan and Galbiati, himself a fomer Italy player, the club's youth team coach.

When Capello retired from playing in 1980, he got a job coaching Milan's under-17 side, and worked closely with under-19 boss Galbiati.

They forged a strong friendship and when Capello was the surprise choice to replace Arrigo Saachi as Milan head coach in 1991, Galbiati became his assistant.

They enjoyed immediate success, going unbeaten in their first 58 league games.

Probably their most famous result was the 4-0 demolition of Barcelona in the 1994 Champions League final, a match which proved how effective Galbiati could be at improving the technique of even the most experienced players.

After the game, Italian striker Daniele Massaro dedicated his two goals to the hours that Galbiati had invested in improving his left foot.

Dutch striker Patrick Kluivert, who worked with the stocky, silver-haired coach at Milan from 1997 to 1998, told BBC Sport: "He is a very good, persistent coach, doing everything Capello wants."

The most recent addition to Team Capello is 50-year-old Neri, who was recruited at Roma in 2001.

The studious, bespectacled Italian first made a name for himself at Lecce in the mid-1980s, but his most spectacular results were at Real Madrid, where he transformed a group of unfit galacticos into a crack unit, enabling them to win their first league title for four years in 2006/7.

The final member of the quartet is Tancredi, England's tall, languid goalkeeping coach.

The 55-year-old made 228 appearances for Roma, including the 1984 European Cup final against Liverpool, in which Bruce Grobbelaar performed his legendary spaghetti legs routine.

He also won 12 caps for Italy and understudied Walter Zenga at the 1990 World Cup.

Tancredi was goalkeeping coach at Roma until 2004 and then followed Capello to Juventus. The FA were initially sceptical about taking him on, preferring to keep Ray Clemence as keeping coach, but Capello was insistent and, unsurprisingly, got his way.

Now Clemence is Tancredi's assistant and the likes of David James are in no doubt about who is in charge. England fans will be hoping the 55-year-old's reputation as a penalty-saving specialist pays dividends this summer.

And while Capello is likely to receive most of the plaudits should England exceed expectations in South Africa, he'll know he couldn't have done it without the help of his four trusted lieutenants.

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The final line of Danny Cipriani's 1999 school rugby report, read out by headmaster Chris McGrath when the player re-visited Donhead prep school on Wednesday, still seems to sum him up as a rugby player more than a decade later.

Sir Clive Woodward, for one, thinks Cipriani was the missing link for England during an uninspiring Six Nations campaign that yielded just six tries in five matches.

Yet instead of looking forward to the build-up to the 2011 World Cup, the 22-year-old is preparing for a two-year sabbatical from international rugby with Super 15 newcomers Melbourne Rebels.

Cipriani made the decision to head to the southern hemisphere after receiving a clear message that he did not feature in England manager Martin Johnson's World Cup plans.

The fly-half insists he holds no grudges against Johnson though.

"I phoned him to let him know my decision and was happy with the conversation we had," he told me. "There's no bad blood at all, it was a positive chat."

Yet, tellingly, Johnson didn't try to talk him out of moving. England's manager doesn't seem to have been overly impressed with Cipriani's form since he dislocated and fractured his ankle in May 2008.

There are also suggestions that he sees him as too much of a maverick, not enough of a team man.

Some, like Woodward, view this as a waste of a great talent. To them, Cipriani is the most naturally gifted player of his generation, a player who combines searing pace, vision and great handling skills.

To others, he is living off one superb performance for England against Ireland in the 2008 Six Nations and only gets so much attention because of his celebrity girlfriend, Kelly Brook.

In just the last few weeks, Cipriani has given ammunition to both parties.

He was man of the match in the Challenge Cup quarter-final win over Gloucester, scoring 17 points and igniting Wasps' backline.

Yet against Bath last weekend, he played a key role in Wasps' defeat, first turning down a straightforward penalty, opting instead for a cross-kick that was defended, and then throwing a looping miss-pass that was intercepted for a try.

Perhaps it's this unpredictability that the pragmatic Johnson finds so difficult to deal with.

Former England skipper Lawrence Dallaglio has known Cipriani since he joined Wasps at the age of 15.

"The truth is that Danny has had a tough couple of years," Dallaglio told me. "He's had two bad injuries, and one of them was very serious.

"Only now is he getting back to the form we expected of him when he first came into the Wasps' first team."

So perhaps Johnson has had some justification for not picking him.

Dallaglio is optimistic about Cipriani's chances of forcing his way back into the England reckoning after the World Cup.

"The good news is that Danny is coming back to form, is only 22 and is going to Australia, where he will develop his rugby," he said.

"And he is still in charge of his decisions. What I do know about Danny is that he is very passionate about playing for England and still has a big desire to do that, which means he won't be in Australia that long."

Cipriani has signed only a two-year contract with the Rebels and indicated that he could come back to Wasps on a short-term basis next winter, before the start of the 2011 Super 15 season.

He will be playing under 1999 World Cup-winning coach Rod Macqueen at Melbourne and alongside players of the calibre of Stirling Mortlock: the scope for developing his game should be vast.

The move should also be liberating. Cipriani's opposite number on Saturday, Cardiff Blues' Ceri Sweeney, said on Tuesday: "I feel a bit sorry for Danny. He is a player with stacks of talent and someone who could really progress to be England's number one.

"But he just gets hounded so much by the press, every minute of every one of his games is critiqued."

And Cipriani admitted: "It's going to be a great life experience, a great opportunity to learn more as a rugby player and to have a great time."

First comes the game against the Blues on Saturday, Cipriani's last home appearance for the club.

"When you think about it like that, it's quite emotional," he admitted. "But I hope I might be back in the future, you never know."

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The men who said they had the money to finance the dream - Nathan Willetts, his father Peter and Russell King - have apparently disappeared, but their destructive legacy remains.

County are £6.9m in debt. Their top earner is on £1m a year for five years, which accounts for about a third of the club's annual revenue. And the club has to pay the taxman £50,000 a month for the next year to stave off a winding-up order.

New owner Ray Trew and his chief executive Jim Rodwell are responsible for trying to clean the Augean Stables.

"We expected it to be bad, but probably not this bad," Rodwell, the former Boston chairman, told me. "The club was living beyond its means. We all know you can live like a king on credit for six months but after that you hit problems."

So it's been a frantic time for the duo following their arrival at Meadow Lane on 11 February.

Their first priority was to stop the club going into administration. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had issued a winding-up petition because of an unpaid tax bill of more than £600,000. A one-off payment of £321,000 and the promise of a further £50,000 a month for the next year averted that threat.

Rodwell and Trew are now dealing with the club's other creditors. First, they asked for written confirmation of how much each was owed. Next, they will discuss repayment schedules with them.

The duo also employed forensic accountants to go through the club's books, and Rodwell admits: "We've found some things that could lead to prosecution. I think we've got a moral obligation to get the police involved."

With County currently seventh in League Two, another big priority is to get promoted this season. Whether that happens or not, Rodwell will have to set about reducing the club's wage bill in the summer.

Football League rules stipulate that clubs can only spend 60% of their turnover on wages, but County had "blown the wage cap out of the water," according to Rodwell. As a result, the League imposed a transfer ban on County before Christmas.
Trew tried to buy Lincoln City in 2006

Rodwell, who says he was the "archetypal journeyman footballer" before becoming caretaker manager, director of football and then chairman at non-league Boston United, admits he has been taken aback by the scale of the wages being paid to the players.

"Some of our contracts are Championship level, if not even Premier League," says the former centre-half, whose biggest claims to fame as a player were helping Rushden & Diamonds win promotion to the Football League and finishing third in Britain's Brainiest Footballer quiz.

The biggest earner is goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, the recipient of that whopping £1m salary.

Peter Trembling, County's former executive chairman and the front man for Munto Finance, sanctioned the spending and admits Schmeichel's pay is "ridiculously high for the division". But he defends the other wages paid to the County squad.

"I always said we shouldn't sign the big names until we had money in the bank," Trembling insists.

When you consider that Sol Campbell walked out on a lucrative five-year contract after just one game and that former director of football Sven-Goran Eriksson made enquiries about bringing David Beckham to Meadow Lane, it's clear that things could have been much, much worse.

And the largesse wasn't confined to player wages. Eriksson travelled the country in a chauffeur-driven car, while his right-hand man Tord Grip flew around Europe scouting players. Fine if you have a hugely wealthy benefactor, but it turned out County didn't.

As I outlined in an earlier blog, Trembling claims he is as much a victim in this saga as anyone else. And it's true he put £500,000 of his own money into the club and has joined the lengthy queue of creditors waiting for their money.

He told me: "This has been a terrible time for me and I believe I have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The money I put into the club was virtually all I've got."

But many fans will have limited sympathy for someone who was Munto's tub-thumper for so long, and even the kindest will accuse him of having been naïve. After all, Trembling continued to defend the project even as evidence mounted that it was built on shifting sands.

Certainly Rodwell was sceptical as he monitored the surreal events at County from afar last summer.

"Like everybody else, I raised my eyebrows when the new owners came in and made these lavish promises," he says. "I know the lower leagues very well and things just didn't stack up. I always had a deep suspicion that it would all end in tears."

Which of course it did, and Rodwell himself is now the man picking up the pieces.

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In fact the Italian had visited the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus near Phokeng on Monday and was hugely encouraged by what he saw.

The centrepiece of the complex, the Royal Marang Hotel, had been completed. Whereas it had been a shell when Capello last visited, in December, it now contained 82 luxurious bedrooms, a spa, sauna and two designer restaurants.

And the training pitches, which had previously been such an area of concern for Capello and his assistant Franco Baldini, were now in good condition.

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"Fabio couldn't have been more happy with what he saw and believes England have secured one of the best bases in the country," a senior Football Association insider told me.

"In particular, he really appreciated how hard they had worked on the pitches."

Much of the credit for the improvement in the pitches goes to Richard Hayden, from the Sports Turf Research Institute in west Yorkshire.

The Irishman travelled to South Africa earlier this year to work on the boggy pitches at England's base and was so successful that Fifa contracted him to work on the other teams' HQs.

The only parts of the Bafokeng complex that are yet to be finished are the gym and medical centre, which should be ready by the end of April.

Niall Carroll, chief executive of Royal Bafokeng Holdings, which owns the site, said: "We remain confident that we will meet the highest standards in every area.

"Construction remains on schedule and the primary pitches will be comparable to that of the Bafokeng Sports Palace (where England play USA on 12 June), which is rated as one of the best in the country.

"We are confident that the venue will be ready and thoroughly tested in time for the World Cup."

So while several other World Cup coaches were grumbling about the state of their HQs at a Fifa meeting in Sun City earlier this week, Capello was able to sit back contentedly.

The FA expects to sign a contract with the Campus by the end of next week - which should be a formality - and will be based there from 3 June.

Rooms will be equipped with flat screen TVs, internet and king sized beds

It will end a two-year project for Baldini, who started looking at potential bases shortly after Capello was appointed England boss in December 2007.

At first, hotels in the Cape Town area impressed most, but had to be ruled out.
With many matches, including the final, being played on the high veldt, England needed a base at altitude if they were to stand any chance of winning the World Cup.

The Velmore Hotel in Centurion then attracted the attention of the FA. But while the hotel was first rate, the training facilities weren't up to scratch.

The opposite was true of the High Performance Centre in Pretoria, where the training facilities were excellent but the accommodation basic and split across several different buildings.

Capello is confident the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus has ticked all the boxes and can be a fitting home from home for his side during the World Cup.

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Their dream of Championship football within five years seemed fanciful, but the recruitment of Sven-Goran Eriksson as director of football gave it some credence.

It's only six months since those heady July days and owners Munto Finance, their previous frontman Peter Trembling and Eriksson have all departed.

The League Two club are challenging for promotion, it's true, but they are also £3.9m in debt and have a High Court date with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs pending.

New owner Ray Trew, who bought County for £1 on Thursday, is confident he can settle the club's tax bill and HMRC's winding-up order, but he admits they could still go into administration if more debts are uncovered.

When you consider that debts increased by £1m during the four weeks Trew was negotiating to buy the club alone, this is a worrying prospect.

How did the heady optimism of July turn so quickly into the devastation of today?

No-one's better placed to answer that than Trembling, the former executive chairman of the club who was once the frontman and defender of Munto Finance.

He claims he was hoodwinked by father and son Nathan and Peter Willett and Russell King, the men who made up Munto, the "acquisition vehicle" formed to buy County.

Trembling says he has ploughed half a million of his own money into the club and feels "bitter" about the last six months.

The trio claimed they had links to the Bahrain royal family and gave a guarantee they would invest a minimum of £5m in the club but instead put in just £50,000, he insists.

"I plan to sue them for leaving the club in the lurch," he told me. "It's about the things they haven't honoured, contracts they haven't honoured. I had a big contract and Sven has even more reason to be unhappy."

The former England manager has kept a dignified silence in recent weeks but is due to release a statement about his time at County, according to his agent Athol Still.

Trembling says he has tried to phone and email the Willetts and King, but "they seem to have disappeared".

He still believes "the project and plan" for County were "perfect", adding "if only they had had the money to do it", which does seem a rather large caveat.

And Trembling wasn't the only person who bought into the improbable dream.

The Supporters Trust, which owned 60% of the club after helping it out of administration with a £170,000 loan in 2003, voted overwhelmingly to give its shareholding to Munto Finance for nothing.

Their willingness to believe in the promises of a white knight might seem misguided now, but with the club £1m in debt at the time and Munto providing a guarantee of funds, it was perhaps understandable at the time.

As it is, the aims of County's new owners are now rather more modest than those of their predecessors.

"The Premier League, that's not really part of our plans," new chief executive Jim Rodwell told BBC Sport.

"We are talking more about sustainability and taking the club forward. What came before, that was a pipedream."

David Gold and David Sullivan propose taking a large stake in West Ham for a nominal fee, in much the same way they bought Birmingham City for £1 in 1993.

The duo might not be offering hard cash up front, but what they can bring, or so they say, is expertise and money for the January transfer window.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, West Ham chairman Andrew Bernhardt was hardly bowled over by this proposal when Sullivan first put it to him at a London restaurant in October.

Things have changed in the last two months though. West Ham are hardly in a position to be picky about their suitors and Bernhardt might have to seriously consider Gold and Sullivan's offer, or one like it.

Much has been made of a court hearing which will take place in Reijkavik on Friday, at which Straumur, who own 70% of West Ham, will try to stave off liquidation.

Some newspapers have billed this as D-Day for the club but in truth little of consequence will happen because of the hearing. Straumur are almost certain to be granted a further nine-month "moratorium" protecting them from their creditors.

Of greater concern is the fact the Hammers are 17th in the Premier League, on a poor run of form and leaking goals. Manager Gianfranco Zola is unlikely to have the funds to avert the slide with January purchases and could lose stars such as Carlton Cole, Matthew Upson and Robert Green.

We shouldn't expect a firesale, because the priority of West Ham's owners, CB Holding, is to keep the club in the Premier League and maximise the value of their "asset".

Then, if and when economic conditions improve, they hope a buyer will come along and meet their £80m valuation for the club.

But it's also true that every player in the squad has a price. For example, the Hammers were willing to sell Upson in the summer if anyone could meet their £8m valuation for the England defender.

That offer never came, but they did sell James Collins to Aston Villa for £5m and their defence has looked wobbly ever since.

So, in short, West Ham will struggle to sign quality players in January and might lose some of their stars.

This is where Gold and Sullivan come in. Their assessment is that the club probably only need three new players - a centre-back, right-back and a striker - to climb the table.

If they survive in the Premier League this season, the duo might then hope to exercise an option to buy the club outright.

They want a deal to be in place by Christmas though and are wary of being treated as a bargaining tool by the current owners.

Sullivan is keen to get back into football

I've spoken to Gold several times and he is a colourful and engaging character. He argues he has extensive experience of running a football club, kept Birmingham solvent and has laid the foundations for them to become an established Premier League force.

A glance at the Birmingham City message boards on this website will tell you that many of their fans are less than enamoured with the work the two Davids did at St Andrews though.

They were relegated to the third tier of English football shortly after the duo took over and went on to become something of a yo-yo club, bouncing between the Premier League and Championship.

Ticket prices went up sharply and much of their recent success has been based on loan signings, mainly from Arsenal, such as Fabrice Muamba, Nicklas Bendtner and Seb Larsson. Hardly the recipe for sustained success.

Gold is a lifelong Hammers fan though, who grew up opposite the ground in East Ham and played for the club's youth team. His passion for the Hammers is in contrast to the feelings of the current owners, who have come into football reluctantly.

As creditors of former chairman Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, the men involved in CB Holding simply see West Ham as an asset.

Gold also argues that, unlike other Premier League owners, we know who he is, where he lives and we can look at the accounts he files with Companies House every year.

Right now, his offer to West Ham could be very hard for them to turn down.

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With seven of South Africa's 10 World Cup stadiums - including the venue for the final, Soccer City in Johannesburg - at altitude, England's meticulous manager knows how important it will be for his players to be properly prepared.

So the Italian has already put them through their paces at the Altitude Centre in London, as well as taking advice from other teams that have recently toured South Africa, including England's cricketers and the British and Irish Lions.

"Just talk to any sportsmen who have played on the high veldt," he told me, "and they will describe how the thin air gave them a dry throat, made them breath differently and speeded up their heart rate."

England's players have undergone individual tests at the centre to see how well they cope with the effects of altitude and it was not necessarily the fittest players who coped best.

"Very fit people tend to be those who can bring as much oxygen to their muscles as quickly as possible," Pullan said.

"Performing at altitude is about using oxygen efficiently though, which is a very different thing. That's what we help them to do.

"I would use the analogy of a Formula One car, which is very fast but uses huge amounts of fuel. We want them to be more like a Toyota Prius."

England's players will be able to prepare by training wearing special masks which put nitrogen into the air, reducing its oxygen content.

The Lions used these masks when they toured South Africa in the summer and I tested
one out at their team hotel in Cape Town.

After 10 suffocating minutes on a rowing machine, I nearly keeled over.

Capello might also choose to get his players sleeping in special altitude tents, which is what the Australian team will be doing.

Altitude also makes England's choice of team base particularly important.

Earlier this week Capello checked on the progress being made building the Royal Bafokeng Sports Complex near Rustenburg which, as BBC Sport revealed in September, is where England are likely to stay for the tournament.

Former England defender Gary Mabbutt, who has been advising the World Cup organisers about their team bases, says: "Any team with ambitions of winning the World Cup needs to be based at altitude."

Rustenburg is 4,920 ft above sea level, which is higher than every host city apart from Johannesburg, at 5,750 ft. All eight groups will feature games played at both sea level and altitude, as will the knock-out games.

"Going from altitude to sea level is a benefit. Going the other way, the team would be absolutely shattered," added Mabbutt.

And the World Cup ambassador thinks Rustenburg, which is a two-hour drive north of Johannesburg, would be a good location in which to be based.

"This is a very quiet spot of the country with some beautiful scenery," he said. "It will also be one of the best climates. Johannesburg can get very cold in the mornings and nights, while Cape Town can be very wet in the winter. Rustenburg will be much warmer and drier."

The mining town of Rustenburg is a stark contrast to England's glamorous 2006 base, Baden Baden though.

There are no luxury shops or boutiques there and my BBC Sport colleague Gabby Logan, who will present a special Inside Sport programme on the World Cup on Monday, said: "I couldn't help noticing as we stopped off at the Shell garage on the way down to Rustenburg that it was probably the highlight of the area.

"Perhaps we'll get the players nipping out to the garage for a can of pop in the evenings."
Mabbutt thinks the lack of distractions in the area will appeal to Capello though.

"Teams will be looking to get their players focussed on the job at hand, which is to win the World Cup final," he said.

"This is a very quiet part of the country, with the main attraction about 30km away at Sun City, and that would appeal to any manager."

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The 2006 tournament was relatively stress-free for the 48-year-old Geordie. The short haul meant thousands of supporters were able to make last-minute trips to Germany and they discovered excellent transport, plentiful accommodation and sympathetic policing when they arrived.

More than 150,000 England fans travelled out in total, dwarfing the support of just about every other nation, and things went so well that they were named fans of the tournament by Fifa.

Although Miles, the international co-ordinator of the FSF, believes this can be a World Cup to remember for England fans, he still has three nagging worries about the tournament.

Number one is accommodation.

Although 25 new hotels have been built especially for the tournament and Fifa has contracted non-graded rooms for the first time - including University halls of residence in Pretoria, cruise liners in Port Elizabeth and safari park lodges near Polokwane - there are fears of a shortage of rooms for the 500,000 fans expected to arrive from around the world in South Africa next summer.

Fifa has even gone so far as to include Mauritius, which is a four-hour flight from South Africa, in its acommodation programme and will place some of its sponsors there.

Furthermore, the rooms which are available are likely to be expensive. Fans' first port of call when booking a room is likely to be Match, the Zurich-based company that Fifa has contracted to organise accommodation and ticketing for the 2010 World Cup.

The company has hired 80% of the graded rooms in South Africa and 13% of the non-graded ones for the duration of the tournament.

The new Cape Town stadium with Table Mountain in the background

Match has based its prices on "rack rates" - the price you would pay if you turned up and asked for a room for the night - already given to them by these hotels and guesthouses.

Fifa argues this is the best way of preventing prices being inflated close the World Cup, yet there is no proof that the rates supplied were accurate.

Fans might also be interested to know that Match will take a hefty 30% commission for each booking it organises.

The alternative is for fans to try and book rooms direct from hotels or another broker yet the truth is that this is unlikely to be any cheaper.

There are even suggestions that hotel prices could go up by as much as 300% next summer, which is why Miles is imploring South African hotels to be reasonable.

"It would be short-sighted to regard the World Cup as a four-week opportunity to take advantage of foreign tourists," he told me.

"It's far better to create an impression that will encourage people to return to the country in years to come. That's what happened with Germany - there was a big hike in tourism after 2006."

Camping, which was so popular with fans at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, will be out of the question this time, as temperatures often drop below zero in places like Johannesburg during the South African winter.

Miles' second worry is about internal transport within the country. South Africa is five times bigger than England and the teams at the World Cup will have to travel vast distances to play their matches.

In Group G one of the teams faces having to play a game in Johannesburg, followed by one in Cape Town, which is a distance of 880 miles or the equivalent of London to Warsaw.

That would take 17 hours to drive, while Miles warns that "flights will be in short supply and expensive".

Getting to and from the stadiums at last summer's Confederations Cup also proved something of a problem.

Miles admits: "There were teething problems with the shuttle buses from the park and rides and fans won't be able to rely on taxis in the way they did in Germany."

His third concern is, predictably, crime, which has been a major topic of conversation ever since South Africa was awarded the World Cup in 2004.

Everyone knows the country has a crime problem. Violent business robberies climbed 41.5% from April 2008 to March 2009, house robberies were up 27.3%, while there were 15,000 recorded carjackings and 18,148 murders last year.

Jill Morris, a consular official for the Foreign Office, put the issue into some perspective when I spoke to her at the launch of the 2010 fans' website last Tuesday though.

"There were 450,000 British visitors to South Africa last year," she told me. "Of those, we had to give assistance in about 1,000 cases. The vast majority of these cases involved nothing more serious than lost passports, with only 139 involving a mixture of arrest, detention and victims of crime."

And World Cup ambassador Gary Mabbutt emphasised the vast resources that are being pumped into policing the tournament.

About 41,000 police have been trained specially for the World Cup, boosting total numbers to 183,000, and a further 120,000 reservists are available if needed.

The police arsenal includes 200 revamped armoured vehicles, 100 high-performance cars for road security, 40 helicopters, and mobile command vehicles.

Miles has already had a series of discussions with the South African police and is hopefuly that the tournament will be policed sensitively, despite recent talk in the country of a zero tolerance approach to troublemakers.

"The South African police have had some training from the German authorities and there is an awareness they will be on display to the world next summer," Miles says.

His advice to travelling fans is to use their common sense by travelling in groups, planning their routes carefully and taking advice from hotel staff about where is and is not safe to go.

A couple of other issues are also worth mentioning. It's crucial for fans to arrange medical insurance before they travel out to South Africa, or else they could be at risk of a bill of up to £25,000 if they fall ill or suffer an accident.

And the usual advice about avoiding unprotected sex is particularly pertinent in a country with the highest rate of HIV in the world, where just under 12% of the 48m population are believed to carry the disease, according to the 2007 UNAIDS report.

Perhaps the final word should go to Mabbutt though, the highly respected former Tottenham and England defender who has worked closely with the organisers of the 2010 World Cup for the last eight years.

He is eager for fans to focus on the positives about the 2010 World Cup. After all, this is an opportunity for them to sample a World Cup on African soil for the first time.

"Fans have the opportunity to combine the world's best football with some of its best sights and experiences next summer," he told me.

"This is an opportunity for South Africa to showcase itself as one of the most beautiful, vibrant and diverse countries in the world. The country is desperate to do that and vast sums have been pumped into new stadiums, infrastructure and security.

"As long as fans plan their trips in advance I am sure they will have a World Cup to remember."

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He's been busy rejigging them in recent weeks, following injuries to a dozen players in Martin Johnson's senior squad.

Next month's autumn internationals, against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand, will be the benchmark of the progress Andrew has made since becoming England's first director of elite rugby three years ago.

His remit then was to "develop young rugby talent through the elite player pathway".

And with so many leading players out injured, we are about to find out whether or not he has succeeded. The former England fly-half accepts that now is the time to judge the progress he has made.

"At my interview for the job I said it would take three years to shape where we needed to go," he told me when I visited his Twickenham HQ a few weeks ago.

"We've now got two years' worth of graduates from the Under-20s and a couple of them are coming into the Saxons and even the senior squad."

Courtney Lawes is the most notable of these players. The Northampton forward has been rocketed from the Under-20s into Johnson's squad in the space of only a few months.

Yet Andrew still seems to have a lot of critics to win over. Google "what does Rob Andrew do?" and you get more than 1,000 responses.

Perhaps it's because his position has never existed before, or because people are suspicious of a well-known figure deemed to be lurking in the shadows behind the England coach.

Andrew insists his job is to support the England coach and take a strategic view of the whole of elite rugby, much like a director of football would do at a Premier League club.

He suggests he inherited a broken system in 2006, where the England team "existed in isolation" and there was "no joined-up thinking about what came after 2003".

So Andrew has created an "elite pathway", which starts with the academies and runs through the Under-18s to the Under-20 side, the Saxons and ultimately the full England team.

The Under-18s are unbeaten since 2007 and the Under-20s have reached the last two World Cup finals, which they lost on each occasion to New Zealand.

Andrew won 71 caps for England, winning the Grand Slam in 1991, 1992 and 1995

"We are closing the gap on New Zealand and have caught South Africa and Australia at age-grade level," argues Andrew, who looks as lithe and youthful as he did in his playing days.

The big test now will be whether the graduates of the junior teams can make the grade in Johnson's side. Andrew's other major objective has been to mend the RFU's broken relationship with the Guinness Premiership clubs.

In the middle of our interview, Andrew got up, unlocked a cupboard and pulled out a bulky A4 document.

It was the eight-year agreement between the clubs and union, signed in November 2007.
It outlines a system under which the clubs are compensated for agreeing to allow the RFU to manage England's elite players.

"This took a great deal of time and a lot of money to put together," Andrew says. "We needed to have a better relationship with the Premiership, because that is fundamental to England's future success.

"I actually think our relationship is very strong now. It's not perfect, but there has been a realisation that we need to work together."

So far, so good. But Andrew's nadir came last spring, when he was almost universally criticised for his handling of Brian Ashton's sacking as England coach.

Just weeks after giving Ashton a vote of confidence, Andrew had pulled the trigger on the likeable Lancastrian. Worst of all, it seemed everyone knew what was happening to Ashton other than the man himself, thanks to a series of leaks from the RFU.

The former Newcastle director of rugby adjusts his rimless glasses as he thinks back to last March and admits it was a "difficult, unsettling period".

Yet he insists he would not do anything differently if the situation arose again.

"It was a rescue job in 2007 and Brian was exactly the right man for picking up the pieces at that particular time," he says.

"But in the end, it was about trying to build something for the longer term and getting the right guy in, which was Martin. Unfortunately, one of the problems of dealing with high-profile personnel changes in sport is that you can't do it quietly."

How is his relationship with Ashton now?

"Of course he was disappointed, but that's the same in any walk of life when you make changes. It was tough, but we got over it."

Andrew also adds that Ashton did some consultancy work for the elite department last year. When the RFU's elite director was copping flak from all sides last March, Sir Clive Woodward waded in by questioning Andrew's credentials and suggesting his relationship with Johnson would be "a forced marriage".

Yet Andrew shrugs off Woodward's criticism - it's worth noting that the World Cup-winning coach was passed over for the elite director job - and insists he has a strong working relationship with Johnson.

The 46-year-old, a Cambridge Blue at both rugby and cricket, speaks enthusiastically about Johnson's first 18 months in the England hotseat and believes the side have "moved a long way from a difficult start" under him.

"Martin is very clear on what he wants to do, but he also listens to people," Andrew says.
"He's been there and done it at the very highest level, is a quick learner and knows what is required to be successful."

Now comes the big test against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand - all of whom are higher in the world rankings than England - at Twickenham next month.

The games will tell us a lot about Johnson's evolving team, and also about the progress Andrew has made behind the scenes at Twickenham.

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The Swedish Football Association are keen to speak to Eriksson about replacing Lars Lagerback as their national coach.

Their president, Lars-Ake Lagrell, is a long-time friend and admirer of the former England manager and says he will sound Eriksson out about the job this week.

What's more, Eriksson has always said he would love to manage his home country. I have spoken to a close ally of the Swede's today, who says this is still very much the case.

So things aren't looking good for Notts County. How badly damaged would they be by the departure of their high-profile director of football?

After all, Eriksson was appointed by County's new owners, Munto Finance, to bring instant kudos and credibility to the League Two outfit.

His recruitment in July ensured that the national spotlight was firmly focused on the previously unfashionable club - and it has been on them ever since.

The exit of Sol Campbell last month after only one match was an embarrassing setback for the club, yet many placed the blame on the former England defender.

The departure of Eriksson, the public face of the new regime, would be a different story altogether and would be sure to cast fresh doubt on County's mystery owners and their plans for the club.

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