fatsam,
I'd worry about playing Rooney and Owen up front. Both have immense skill but their talents lie in running at defenses at pace and causing defenders problems around the box. Neither of them is the sort of player who could 'hold up' the ball. With someone like Beckham in the team you know that he could find a targetman easily who could lay it into the path of Rooney or Owen, but without this target you end up trying to dribble past 5 men as we saw against Northern Ireland.
Otherwise I agree with your team selection.
The biggest problem for me is that we never seem like a 'team'. One of the commentators said, quite rightly, at the end of the Northern Ireland game that you wouldn't swap a single England player for a Northern Ireland player, and yet they played so well as a team, with so much drive that they matched us and eventually beat us...when on paper it should have been a walk-over.
I don't know whether this is a product of bad management, or lack of team experience. I personally doubt the former and the latter is unavoidable. The players hardly get any time to play together as a team outside of competitions and when they do play friendlies the formation and team selection is changed so often its no wonder they get mixed up.
My personal gripe is with David Beckham. He is undoubtably a fantastic player. His enthusiasm is astounding and will always fight to the end, but for me he is the weak link in the 'team'. He is usually positioned on the right, but instead drops into the middle in-front of the back four. His distribution from there is first rate, but it means we rely on the long ball all the time without getting men up the pitch. It also confuses Gerrard and Lampard as they don't know what to do with themselves, and leaves the right hand side exposed.
The next two games are vital for England, and especially Sven. As a nation we don't do failure well (You'd think we be used to it by now).
The big test for me will be how the players react. If they can't raise their game for these occassions then they don't deserve to be in the team...regardless of how much they're worth!
leafy