It's early November and we're still another seventh months until the tournament starts but I must admit that the injuries to Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard are beginning to worry me. According to Radio 5, Gerrard hasn't trained for two weeks and Ferdinand's overall fitness this season may have contributed to some of his indifferent performances when he has appeared for Manchester United.

Has to be a quick one this weekend due to the imminent arrival of most of wife's family for lunch, then I'm straight off to a game in the Championship. Last weekend I managed to watch no football whatsoever due to a family gathering and a wedding ('Likely Lads' moment: I was the guest with the mobile phone looking at score updates from Liverpool/Man UÂ during the speeches), so I'm looking forward to this weekend, especially Ajax v Feyenoord tomorrow lunchtime (ESPN)

It's about an hour or so to go before the lunchtime game: Arsenal v Spurs (12:45pm, Sky Sports 1) looks a tasty one, Arsenal have won all four of their home league games this season and Spurs have a decent away record; the rest of today's slate is notable for the players that are missing.

After a hectic weekend in European competition which didn't go particularly well for some of the Premiership teams, we're back to the bread and butter (or should that be the champagne and caviar) stuff. No doubt about this weekend's biggest game: Liverpool v Manchester United on Sunday.

Probably not...which is a shame. It's got a really good goalscoring record against one of the top teams in the Premiership.

Anyway, here's the line up for the UEFA playoffs: all of them kick off at 7pm GMT on Saturday November 14th 2009.

Greece v Ukraine

Ireland v France

Portugal v Bosnia & Herzegovina

Russia v Slovenia

It's also worth noting that on the Saturday the second leg of the New Zealand/Bahrain (0-0) playoff kicks off at 7am GMT that Saturday and the first leg of Costa Rica v Uruguay kicks off an hour later than the European games.

OK, so the definition of 'tomorrow' was a bit flexible to say the least, but Saturday is here so let's have a quick look at the games that feature England internationals. Not surprisingly, the first game of the day is the one with the most England squad members on show: Aston Villa v Chelsea (Sky Sports 1 now) could feature seven players including Emile Heskey, who seems to want to leave Villa in order to improve his chances of making the squad next year; an odd time to start making these comments seeing as though the transfer window doesn't re-open for a while yet.

Confirmed qualifiers in alphabetical order: Australia, Argentina (yes, they did it - and it wouldn't have been the same without them), Brazil, Chile, Denmark, England, Germany, Ghana, Honduras, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, North Korea, Paraguay, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and USA.

Hello again, it's a brief one this evening but we'll have another couple of posts before the weekend with more news from the final round of qualifiers and a Premiership preview.

Our unbeaten run went out of the window at the weekend, but we're not reading too much into it: if Rio Ferdinand is having a 'blip' we'd rather he had it now than next June and imagine how disappointing it would have been if we'd been unbeaten until the first game of the tournament proper.

By the end of the weekend, we'll probably have a much better idea of who will joining the countries who have already qualified for South Africa, who will be in the play offs and which (if any) of the major footballing powers will be watching England on TV. Here's a quick guide to the various scenarios that will be played out around the world today:

EUROPE

Group 1: wide open.

Firstly, apologies that we've missed a couple of weeks on the Premiership front due to obligations elsewhere but as England have their last qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup coming up and it would be missing the point of the entire blog for to ignore them, we're back for a two part preview of the qualifiers that are taking place all over the world over the next week or so.

It'll have to be a quick one I'm afraid: Spurs v Man United was a great game, with a goal after 47 seconds and a United comeback. Unfortunately Man City v Arsenal will be remembered for Emmanuel Adebayor's pathetic behaviour; Togo still have a slim chance of qualifying for South Africa (they have to win in Cameroon on 9th October and hope Morocco win in Gabon) so if you're a fan of running almost the whole length of the pitch to take the mick out of the fans of your former club and stamping on the head of one of your ex-team mates then you might still be in for a treat.

The list of confirmed qualifiers for next year is as follows:

Australia, Brazil, England, Ghana, Holland, Japan, North Korea, Paraguay, South Korea and Spain. Possibly the only surprise there is North Korea (making their second appearance in the finals) but all of these countries have qualified before.

Last time we beat anyone 5-1 in a World Cup qualifier, our opponents reached the final and we got knocked out by the team that beat them.

But at least we have the chance to stop that from happening again - and here are the caps and exclamation marks I promised earlier:

WE QUALIFIED EASILY WITH A 5-1 WIN OVER CROATIA!

Brazil qualified at the weekend thanks to a 3-1 win in Argentina, who
are now fourth in the South American group, five points behind Chile and Paraguay and only two points in front of Colombia and Ecuador. If Ecuador win in Bolivia this evening or Colombia win in Uruguay and Argentina fail to pick up a point in Paraguay early on Thursday morning then either or
possibly both of them latter could leapfrog Diego's boys.

2-1 this time, goals from Lampard (pen) and Defoe, the Slovenes got one back late in the game. Croatia are drawing 0-0 with Belarus, but there's only about 20 minutes gone.

Slovenia are no mugs internationally speaking: since independence from the old Yugoslavia in 1991, they reached both Euro 2000 and the 2002 World Cup and they are currently ranked 57th in the world and 31st in Europe (which puts them ahead of Wales!) and they lie third in World Cup qualifying group three, two points behind Northern Ireland with three games left to play.