THEY say football managers live and die by their decisions.

Well, depending on the outcome of the next five days, Steve McClaren will either be hung, drawn and quartered for his decision to recall Emile Heskey, or granted a stay of execution.

Heskey is one of those players who continually divides opinion amongst supporters; there are some who think he's a complete waste of space at international level, while others believe he can perform a certain role for the national side.

In the present circmstances, I believe McClaren has little choice other than to play Heskey up front alongside Michael Owen for the two must-win qualifiers against Israel and Russia, bearing in mind Wayne Rooney, Darren Bent and Peter Crouch are all unavailable.

I know Heskey has his limitations as an individual, and people always point to his patchy goalscoring record as a reason for not wanting him near the England set-up.

But, for me, the art of goalscoring is all about partnerships, and the key to success is having two players who complement each other.

In an ideal world, you'd want two strikers who are both capable of scoring sack loads of goals, but if you look through history, it rarely works out like that.

What normally happens is you get one striker who scores the vast majority of the team's goals, and the other ends up doing most of the hard work which makes his partner look good.

That's why Michael Owen loves playing up front with Emile Heskey because he gets all the glory whilst Heskey does all the ugly stuff.

Whatever you think about Owen, he needs a big man up front alongside him to take some of the weight off his shoulders because he's no good with his back to goal.

Heskey could therefore come to McClaren's rescue over the next five days by becoming England's unsung hero.