IT takes a lot to admit you’re wrong – particularly when you’re the England manager – but surely that’s what has to happen if we’re going to salvage any pride from this summer’s World Cup.

Fabio Capello probably won’t appreciate peons like myself questioning his judgement from the safety of my keyboard at Bolton News towers, nor indeed the multitude of scribes with infinitely more sway than I who are queuing up to put in their two cents worth.

But I just hope that a man whose preparations looked faultless right up until the point he selected his squad for South Africa, has got a Plan B, and that he chooses to put it into action on Wednesday afternoon.

Slovenia haven’t exactly struck me as world beaters but if we continue to look as blunt as we have for all but a few moments of the tournament so far, we’re going home. No question about it.

Capello’s position has, for the first time in his tenure, been put under pressure. We have started to find faults in the little foibles that were overlooked while the Italian was getting results. It summed it up yesterday when I read one columnist effectively calling for the return of Sven-Goran Eriksson… sheesh!

It certainly isn’t a new situation for an England manager, take Sir Bobby Robson, for example – he had to endure it on countless occasions.

In Mexico 1986, following Bryan Robson’s injury, Ray Wilkins’ sending off and a couple of below-par performances, the under-pressure boss was forced to make wholesale changes for the final group game against Poland in Monterrey.

In came Peter Reid, Steve Hodge, Peter Beardsley and Trevor Steven out went Mark Hateley and Chris Waddle and thanks to Gary Lineker’s finest day in international football, we were in the second round.

Four years later, Bobby found himself in another sticky situation having drawn against the un-fancied Republic of Ireland in the opening game History has taught us that having talked with senior players in the squad, he opted to shelve the 4-4-2 formation, bring in Des Walker as a sweeper and replace Gary Stevens with Paul Parker at right-back.

We now regard that campaign as the country’s greatest footballing achievement since 1966 – but let’s not forget we only scraped out of the group thanks to a goal-less draw against the Dutch and a slender 1-0 win over a stubborn Egypt side.

If Capello can scrap his blueprints and go back to the drawing board between now and Wednesday, time will gloss over the first two games in exactly the same way it had in those awful early performances in 86 and 90.

I just hope for England’s sake that the man who calls the shots isn’t too stubborn to heed the warnings.