It doesn't seem that long ago when Eriksson led his side to a 3-0 win over Spain in his first game as England coach back in February 2001.

During that time, he has managed to steer England to the World Cup finals in the Far East in 2002 where his team were knocked out by Brazil in the quarter-finals.

And who could forget last year’s disappointment when England were knocked out of Euro 2004 by Portugal on penalties.

But despite the painful memories which still linger from that epic tussle in Lisbon, all eyes are now firmly set on reaching the 2006 World Cup in Germany next summer.

And Sven is hopeful his team can finally produce when it matters most and bring some major silverware back to England.

“I am looking forward to my 50th game and time runs very quickly. 50 games is a lot considering we don’t play that often," said Sven.

“But we are more mature and more experienced. At the moment we have an extremely good squad, but those are only words and we have to show it on the pitch.

“I hope we can show that against Northern Ireland and qualify for the World Cup. I feel we have improved and that is what we are working for.

“The job I have in taking England to another World Cup is bigger than any other job you can achieve in football.

“Winning is a success, but you only have the chance to win something as an international manager every two-years.

“I hope if we are physically better next time, we can do even better. That was one of the things we talked about after the last World Cup in Japan.”

Many people will expect England to have an easy ride when they face Northern Ireland at Old Trafford in a vital World Cup qualifier.

But as Sven looks back over his 49 games in charge, he knows there are never any easy games in international football and believes Lawrie Sanchez’s side will provide another stern test for his team.

He added: “I don’t remember an easy game in this job. You only have to look at when we played the likes of Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Slovakia at home. We have suffered in those games.

“But it is not just England. I think that happens in international football all over the world today.

“However, there have been many times when I feel we have played to our potential.

“In most of the World Cup qualifying games I think that has been the case and when it came to the big tournaments we played a lot of good football.

“If I was an England fan, I would be very happy with the 2-0 win over Wales and we produced a good performance.

“I hope we can play good football against Northern Ireland and win the game, because three points are absolutely necessary in the qualification for the World Cup. I want to send the fans home happy.

“Northern Ireland will try to be very aggressive against us and try to stop us playing any football which I think is fair.

“They are very good from set-pieces and they get good delivery into the box from Damien Johnson and Keith Gillespie.

“They were very unlucky against Canada in their last game. The conditions were awful and it was very difficult to play football for both teams.”

If England manage to pick up maximum points from the next two games against Northern Ireland and Azerbaijan next Wednesday, they will go someway to booking their place in the finals in Germany next summer.

Sven was quick to welcome the news that the players will be given a four week break before the finals get underway and believes it will give them an even stronger chance of going further in the tournament.

He said: “I am extremely happy that people helped us get the four week break because it will be very important and I know the players are happy with it.

“We need to have at least one more week to have a chance of competing. Now we have that, we have to make sure that we qualify.”

And if Sven does manage to help England qualify for the World Cup again, he will certainly make sure that the team try and produce exciting free flowing football that the nation can be proud of.

“I don’t think you can win the World Cup if you play bad football. That is impossible. I want to play good football and we are practicing that all the time.

“As a professional coach I admired how Greece won Euro 2004. They did not play spectacular football, but they did what they had to do with the players they had.

“It was not total football that the Dutch had in 1978. But they did what they were good at.

“Of course I want to see football played in another way and we are trying to do that. With the players we have today, we should play good football.”