After mounting injury worries and the Roy Keane affair, scientists yesterday gave England and Ireland fans even less to cheer about - predicting that a South American team will win the World Cup.

Researchers at the University of Ulster made the claim after carrying out statistical analysis of every match taking place in Japan and South Korea over the next month.

A focus group of football supporters plumped for England's traditional World Cup nemesis, Argentina, to win the coveted prize while computer simulation saw Brazil come out on top.

Dr Peter O'Donoghue, a lecturer in sports studies and a Coventry City fan, said: "The result of our research is a classic case of head versus heart, number crunching against subjective judgment. It will be interesting to see how the tournament pans out and whether the human brain or the computer is the best way of analysing such unpredictable contests as a World Cup."

The scientists used two main methods of determining which two teams would reach the final in Yokohama, Japan, on June 30th. In the first, a "pools panel" gave their verdict on every match using information such as the quality of teams, previous results and even the state of England captain David Beckham's broken metatarsal. Their verdict was Argentina to meet Italy in the final with the South Americans coming out on top.

Current World Champions France were placed fourth while Portugal took third spot.

The second model used a computer to simulate the World Cup ties and based its results on FIFA world rankings and the distance teams had to travel to compete.

It also looked at the effect of switching between South Korea and Japan for games and rest periods between matches.

The simulation was run 2,000 times and predicted that Brazil would beat Italy in the final and lift the trophy for the fifth time.

Argentina took third place followed by Spain.

Both models agreed that England and Ireland would finish runners-up in the their qualifying groups but would lose to France and Spain respectively in the first knock-out stage.

Dr O'Donoghue added: "Although our predictions are a bit of fun, this is a serious piece of research.

"After the tournament we intend to write a research paper on the relative merits of qualitative versus quantitative methods." Concentrating on FIFA rankings and distance travelled to the World Cup venues, Japan would beat South Korea in the final.