After the caviar, the inevitable caveats. Generous and deserved though the praise for England has been following Saturday's extraordinary 5-1 victory in Germany, the truth of the matter is that, in terms of the 2002 World Cup, Sven-Goran Eriksson and his players have not yet reached the end of the beginning.

The Germans remain top of the qualifying group. England are three points behind them with a match in hand and, as a result of Munich, a superior goal difference of four. Desirable though this situation is, from an English point of view it is not exactly dormie.

The most foolish assumption now would be that England simply have to turn up at St James' Park in Newcastle tomorrow night and Old Trafford four weeks from Saturday to obtain maximum points from their remaining qualifiers against Albania and Greece.

Should this happen, it is hard to envisage Germany scoring enough times at home to Finland to edge England into the play-offs on goal difference. A sanguine state of affairs this would be, but barely had Eriksson's players wiped the sweat from their brows Saturday night than the coach was stressing the need for the team to be refocused.

It is a feeling echoed by an England captain who in Munich cast off the last traces of midshipman's diffidence to command both the ball and the game. "The whole nation was behind us in Germany and will be behind us in Newcastle," declared David Beckham. "There'll be no problem about lifting the players for the Albania game but people may need to be patient. Remember it took us more than 70 minutes to score in Albania and their defence could again cause us some problems."

Beckham's point was well made. The 3-1 win in Tirana in March masked the angst Eriksson's side suffered at the end of the match when the 2-0 lead established by Michael Owen and Paul Scholes came close to being wiped out once Altin Rraklli had come off the Albania defence to run at the England centre backs.

A mistake by Rio Ferdinand allowed Rraklli to score in stoppage-time and, almost immediately, Albania had another goal ruled out on an offside decision as narrow as that which allowed Owen's equaliser to stand in Munich.

The Tirana crowd was still shrilling its disgust when Andy Cole scored England's third and as the match ended Ashley Cole was struck by a lipstick thrown either by a feisty woman or an odd fellow.

So anyone who assumes England will at least double the advantage they hold over Germany on goal difference by running in four against Albania tomorrow should be reminded that this tough nation is rarely beaten easily and certainly not in the present qualifiers, where they have yet to lose by more than two.

Finland's 2-0 victory in Tirana at the weekend is likely to make the Albanians even more obdurate tomorrow than they were against England in the spring.