What a night for David Nugent, making his England debut as a substitute with only ten minutes of the match remaining -- and topping off all this excitement with a goal. OK, so it was only a tap-in but it counts and he joins an elite club of players.

I am convinced that if he had joined the game earlier, Nugent would have scored more goals. He was a constant threat from the moment he set foot on the field and looked more dangerous in those few minutes than Wayne  Rooney and Andy Johnson had done during the whole game.

He is obviously destined for greater things, and if Preston don't make it up and out of the Championship again this season, he will leave Deepdale and join the Premier League via a transfer, probably to Everton.

'A policy for beating lesser European teams could be to field more players from the Championship; players used to a more passionate and dogged style of play would provide the edge that Messers Rooney, Frank Lampard and Co. clearly cannot'


Why was he so effective in comparison to the other Premiership stars on display? My theory is that the other members of the England squad play in the Premiership every week and are not used to facing opposition of Andorra's quality.

Outside of the Premiership there are teams that are low on skill but are dogged in their determination and play in the opposition's faces. Nugent faces these sorts of teams most weeks and can cope with it. He adopts the strategy of running at defenders and making space for himself and, unlike Rooney, can cope with the rough treatment when the going gets tough. His extra yard of pace makes this possible, along with his undoubted skill on the ball and eye for a goal.

There was another example of this on Wednesday night as David Healy knocked in two more goals for Northern Ireland against Sweden, taking his Euro 2008 total to nine. Healy again has not played in the Premiership; after being shown the door by Manchester United he built his reputation in the Championship at Preston before trawling the Championship depths with Leeds. Jason Koumas and Gareth Bale, two other Championship stars, were also on target for Wales the same evening.

So what is the lesson here for international team managers? A policy for beating lesser European teams could be to field more players from the Championship; players used to a more passionate and dogged style of play would provide the edge that Messers Rooney, Frank Lampard and Co. clearly cannot. Only Stevie Gerard really showed his mettle in Barcelona. Perhaps we should save our Premiership stars for the matches where superior skills are required; that seems to be the only way of motivating the prima donnas in the England set-up.