SVEN GORAN ERIKSSON refused to condemn his players after England stuttered to a 1-0 World Cup qualifying win over Wales in Cardiff.
Joe Cole saved the Swede's blushes yesterday with a deflected second-half winner.
But Eriksson insisted his new 4-5-1 formation had been a success. He said: "I am very happy with the result. The most important thing was to get three points.
"I thought the formation worked well for an hour but we should have scored more. We will try and play better against Northern Ireland on Wednesday, but I'll be happy if we get the same result.
"Our attitude was better today than when we lost 4-1 to Denmark."
Only a world-class save from England keeper DAVID BECKHAM and Paul Robinson to deny John Hartson secured victory.
Despite the poor display, Eriksson is still unbeaten in competitive matches as England boss, with yesterday's win his 21st.
And he added: "At least we know we can now play this system. Rooney did very well on his own up front and I don't care what people say.
Deflection
"He can play there, on the left, on the right, in the centre or as a second striker — he's that good."
However, Wales skipper Ryan Giggs said: "It was only a deflection that beat us." Welsh boss John Toshack added: "England barely caused us a problem apart from that.
"And Robinson had to make the save of the match to stop us scoring."
Skipper David Beckham said: "We achieved today what we set out to do.
"We won the game and got three points and put in a better performance than we did in that friendly in Denmark. "Maybe some people would have liked to have seen more goals to show that the Copenhagen performance was out of our system."
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