SO there was no surprise call for James Beattie or Kevin Phillips when Sven-Goran Eriksson announced his 23-man squad for Euro 2004.

Safe, containing a powerful engine and utterly reliable, Eriksson's squad bears more than a slight resemblance to a Swedish-built car.

There were no surprises in his 23-man selection but - and it has to be said - no glaring omissions either.

True to form, the Swede mixed caution with experience and come up with a balanced squad - most of whom have been tried and tested in competitive international football.

In virtually every position Eriksson has chosen experience and flexibility over raw promise.

The one exception is at centre-back where Gareth Southgate failed to convince Eriksson about his ability to recover from injury - allowing Ledley King the chance to be the one fresh blossom amid a garden of hardy perennials.

Ten places in the starting line-up for England against France in the opening game are almost guaranteed: James, G Neville, Campbell, Terry, A Cole, Beckham, Gerrard, Scholes, Rooney and Owen.

That leaves just the holding role left to be filled with Nicky Butt, Owen Hargreaves, Phil Neville and Frank Lampard all competing for it.

The rest of Eriksson's squad is all about planning for eventualities.

He likes to keep his options open, that is why Joe Cole and Kieron Dyer are there rather than Jermain Defoe: they are pacy, skilful attacking players who can play across the whole of midfield, in a supporting role up front, or even, in the case of Dyer, at right-back.

As our panel of goalscorers shows, since the start of the 2002/03 season only Michael Owen and Alan Shearer have scored more goals among English-qualified strikers in the Premiership than Beattie.

Beatts has scored more than twice as many as Alan Smith, three times as many as Wayne Rooney and almost twice as many as Vassell and Heskey.

Though the stats back up Beattie's case, Eriksson asks for more from his strikers than just the ability to hit the back of the onion bag and it would have been a Richter Scale shock if he had been selected.

The last time he played for England was in November as a sub against Denmark - and he was only in the squad then because Smith had first been named then omitted due to an incident which was under police investigation.

Football, boiled down to its purest form, is a game of ifs, buts and maybes - what if Beatts had scored instead of hitting the bar against Liechtenstein last September?

But now no Saints fan can realistically argue against Rooney's inclusion ahead of the Saints pair, while Vassell has always impressed at international level.

As for Heskey, there is just no way Eriksson was going to leave him out.

All managers have their favourites - Paul Telfer was one of Gordon Strachan's to name but one obvious example - and Heskey is one of Sven's.

Defoe and Smith are on standby so that left Beattie at least seventh in line - and possibly eighth if Phillips' post-Christmas form had caught Eriksson's eye.

Phillips was named in the Swede's first squad as England coach against Spain in 2001, but his last international remains the 1-0 defeat in Italy under Peter Taylor in November 2001 when David Beckham captained his country for the first time.

For Beattie, Euro 2004 came a year too late - 12 months ago he would probably have made the final squad.

With 17 goals in 2003.04, he has proved that 2002/03 was no fluke. For the sake of his 2006 World Cup dream, he now needs two more impressive seasons. But with Sven seeming to prefer pacy strikers like Owen, Vassell and Defoe, even that might not be enough to rekindle his international future.