England vs Uruguay Friendly this Wednesday - Betting Preview

England's friendly with Uruguay at Anfield on Wednesday is Sven-Goran Eriksson's final opportunity to assess who should make the cut for his World Cup squad. With Michael Owen on the easy list, their is an opportunity for a striker to stake his claim for a ticket to the finals, with Darren Bent, Jermaine Defoe and Peter Crouch all seemingly on the fringe of making the squad. In their last match, Eriksson's men beat Argentina 3-2, leaving many with the impression that, just maybe, England may be ready to end their 40-year quest to reclaim the game's greatest prize. Indeed, a performance anything near that level against Uruguay and this encounter should be one way traffic. And playing Uruguay is a sound precursor to the World Cup Finals themselves where England's opening game is against their South American neighbours Paraguay. As you would expect, England are long odds-on to prevail in this match, so we need to look elsewhere for some semblance of value. Although mindful of the fact that England can often take a while to warm to their task, I reckon that they will be up for this match in a major way - especially with the strikers particularly needing to impress - and confidence will be high from that win over Argentina in November. Interestingly, despite the matches being relatively insignificant and England often failing to produce an overall performance that you would expect given their strength in depth, recent friendly matches have yielded quite a number of goals. For their part, Uruguay do possess very capable goalscorers in the shape of Diego Forlan and Walter Pandiani. However, their defence and midfield is nowhere near the level of England's. In their last eleven matches, England have averaged 1.8 goals per game. With this in mind, backing Sven's men to win 2-0, which rates good value at 11/2 with Betfred, looks the percentage call.