The announcement of Sven Goran Eriksson's Squad for Germany reveals the Swede's Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll qualities like no other. Grabbing the headlines will be the inclusion of 17 year old Theo Walcott. Arsenal's January transfer window signing has yet to play a premiership match for Arsene Wenger. The Frenchmen recently said that Arsenal had too many important matched for Walcott to have been blooded.

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Nonetheless, the 17 year old has done enough in two observed training sessions at Arsenal's London Colney training ground to impress Sven at the expense of the more experienced
Jermain Defoe.

Walcott's odds on being the World Cup's top scorer at bet365 sit at 50/1, ahead of seasoned professionals of the likes of Italy's Alessandro Del Piero (80/1) and Sweden's Henrik Larsson (66/1) who will surely get more minutes on the pitch. One can only hope that the experience of the World Cup will not prove too much for a lad who twelve months ago was playing for Southampton's reserves and taking his GCSEs.

Yet for all Eriksson's justification behind the Walcott decision, saying it's a 'gamble, I can't deny that', his innate conservatism can be seen throughout the squad. Firstly, he has chosen only four strikers, whereas a bold manager would have sacrificed the plentiful defensive cover for another attacking option; secondly, he has picked players who are currently injured / coming back from injury (Green, Cole, Campbell, Jenas, Downing, Owen, Rooney and on standby, Luke Young) while fully fit players have been cast aside in the likes of Shaun Wright Phillips.

The latter must be feeling particular sick given his big money move last summer from Manchester City to Champions Chelsea, and Sven's previous policy of picking players even if they were not regularly staring for their clubs (see his treatment of Owen last season while on the bench at Real Madrid).

A third piece of evidence of the conservatism in the squad is that somehow Owen Hargreaves has snuck into the squad by virtue of his utility and reveals further Sven's capacity for "sacred cows" - favourites whose form is not relevant to their inclusion (see Owen.)What the squad also indicates, encouragingly from this author's place in the stands, given the likely absence of Rooney and the implications for the rest of the squad, is that Sven may well break with his time honoured tradition and play a 4-1-4-1 formation with Carrick/Jenas holding and a four of Becks-Lamps-Gerrard-Cole operating behind Owen.

What this would also allow is for a plan B - the absence of which has often been the source of criticism of the Swede - to emerge in the form of Peter Crouch should England need it. Such a hope, and it may end up as only that, is surely no too much of an indulgence for England fans when compared to pining a nations hopes on a player not old enough to vote.

Provisional squad:
Robinson (Tottenham), James (Manchester City), Green (Norwich); G Neville
(Manchester United), Ferdinand (Manchester United), Terry (Chelsea), Cole
(Arsenal), Campbell (Arsenal), Carragher (Liverpool), Bridge (Chelsea),
Beckham (Real Madrid), Carrick (Tottenham), Lampard (Chelsea), Gerrard
(Liverpool), Hargreaves (Bayern Munich), Jenas (Tottenham), Downing
(Middlesbrough), J Cole (Chelsea), Lennon (Tottenham), Rooney (Manchester
United), Owen (Newcastle), Crouch (Liverpool), Walcott (Arsenal).

Standby:
Carson (Liverpool), Young (Charlton), Reo-Coker (West Ham), Defoe
(Tottenham), Johnson (Crystal Palace).