Frank Lampard has insisted England are determined to maintain their 100 per cent start to the World Cup qualifying campaign and avoid the stress of booking their place in South Africa in the final game.

England take on Ukraine at Wembley tomorrow already boasting a five-point lead in Group Six, but Lampard is still worried about repeating mistakes of the past.

The national team missed out on a place in Euro 2008 after cracking under pressure in their last match and losing to Croatia.

Even when England have successfully progressed to major tournaments in recent years, they have always left it late - their qualification for the last three World Cups have all gone to the end of the campaign, as did Euro 2000 and 2004.

Lampard is desperate to avoid such a risk this time around and said: "We have to capitalise on this early start. We want to wrap qualification up earlier than we have in the past and not leave it to the last game. We didn't do ourselves any favours by putting ourselves in that position last time out with the Euros.

"We all know what happened. We were fighting from behind for a lot of the group and it put us under a lot of pressure later on.

"It backfired seriously and none of us will forget that feeling of not qualifying for a major tournament.

"Now we're in a position where we can put a lot of daylight between us and the teams behind us and make sure we get through without such problems. We have a very hard game against Ukraine and an awkward one in Kazakhstan, mainly because of the journey, in June. Then it is Andorra at home a few days later and we know if we really kick on in these three games then our position is really strong.”

Lampard also credited Fabio Capello for instilling discipline, humility and a “selfless” attitude into the squad which had been missing under previous England managers to mould them into a coherent team.

“Capello was exactly what we needed,” the midfielder added.

“We needed a bit more selflessness in the side.
“At times it was easy to see we played as individuals too much in the past. We have very, very good individuals, but the team didn't perform because we weren't playing as a group.”