Michael Walker finds Graeme Le Saux deeply bewildered as to why his performances for Chelsea this season have not earned him a recall to Sven-Goran Eriksson's England team.

It was a red velvet and chandeliers kind of joint and no surprise it was once a film set. A mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside was where Graeme Le Saux suggested meeting, where outside on the lawn Oddjob decapitated a statue with his flying bowler hat at the beginning of Goldfinger.

Inside was less dramatic, just Le Saux talking freely and intelligently, if at times in a state of minor bewilderment. His life feels more like a mystery than a James Bond thriller, a struggle to understand the paradox that is Chelsea and the puzzle that is his England career.

The FA Cup rather than Fort Knox is Chelsea's aim this weekend; the World Cup rather than world domination is Le Saux's mission after that. Both are long shots. Chelsea could frustrate a Buddhist monk with their inconsistency, while Le Saux playing for England in the summer seems as distant as Japan itself. Le Saux sat in Oddjob's shadow and wondered aloud about both.

Without vanity and with justification Le Saux feels he has done a good job for Chelsea this season, even if they are still capable of winning at Manchester United and being spanked 5-1 at Tottenham, where they go tomorrow in the FA Cup.

A good job is what Le Saux thinks he could also do for England. Yet, while Sven-Goran Eriksson has found time and space for Chris Powell, Ashley Cole, Michael Ball and Wayne Bridge at left-back, and half a dozen others from Owen Hargreaves to Nick Barmby at left midfield, England's problem position has never been filled by this one obvious solution.

Le Saux comes straight out of left field, though for some that has long been a sticking point. Independent of thought and occasionally reckless of deed, Le Saux has dared to be slightly different and, after listening to some "rationalising" about his international predicament, it becomes difficult not to conclude Le Saux's face simply does not fit. Not once in 10 squads named by Eriksson over the past 13 months has Le Saux been included.

At 33 he would reluctantly accept if it were all about birth certificates. He would stop his World Cup dreaming, keep his 36 England caps and treasure the memories - the good ones, playing all four games in France '98; and the mixed ones, being part of the last match at Wembley, against Germany 18 months ago. But Powell is 32 and is an Eriksson regular. Similarly Le Saux would be more accepting if poor form was a reason but by common consent he is playing the best football of his career. And again, if there was a surfeit of natural talent down the left then Le Saux would concede he had just lost out. But there is not.

It would be wrong to say Le Saux is in danger of consuming his insides with the situation but his confusion has an ache to it. Eriksson rarely speaks of individuals, so Le Saux's frustration is increased by just not knowing. Additionally it is being prodded, he said, by the fact he seems to be winning the man-on-the-street vote. Then there is Chelsea's Dutch contingent who returned from playing England last month with the words: "You should be there." "From my peers I've had a fair amount of support," Le Saux said. "That's another comfort and a spur to try harder."

In Eriksson's defence Le Saux was recently back from injury when the England manager announced his first squad last February and Eriksson wanted to see something new. "I was sort of tolerant then," Le Saux said of his omission. "I could rationalise it to a certain point. I suppose I started questioning it in the summer when England had a couple of games. I felt that I'd had a good run to the end of the season and I was hopeful. That didn't happen, so I went on a nice holiday.

"I came back, had a good pre-season in terms of fitness but I thought I probably wouldn't be in [the squad for Holland at White Hart Lane] after just one league game. Really I've been trying to understand, logically, why, since. I'm trying to give myself the best chance of making a squad, I feel I am giving it a good shot. What can I do? I can't start sending him videos. Mr Eriksson can hardly be accused of not attending games. But, ultimately, I'd like to have some answers, even if it meant I could just put that one to bed. Logically, it's very hard, maybe that's where people have some sympathy with me. The saddest thing for me is that I feel I have something to contribute to that side."

He has never had a conversation with Eriksson and is not demanding one but, for the Holland friendly last month, Le Saux said he had positive signals from the Football Association via Chelsea.

"I've had a lot of feedback through the club which led me to believe that I would be in the last squad. I know there have been certain conversations between our manager and certain people within the FA. But, much as I wanted to believe that I was in it, I didn't take my boots home after the game, just in case I had to sneak them back into training al-Qaeda style. We were at Aston Villa and all the international players put their boots in a black bag and then they aren't seen for a week. I was in the dilemma: 'Do I put my boots in the black bin liner or do I not?' It wasn't like I was told I would definitely be in it but I had lots of good feedback. But not enough for me to put my boots in the bag." He made the right choice.

The next England squad, for the friendly with Italy at Elland Road, is named a fortnight today and Le Saux remains optimistic. As he said, what else can he do? Playing well for Chelsea tomorrow would be a start. Fortunately for him, Le Saux was ill the night of the 5-1 League Cup semi-final hammering. "I watched it on television," he said, "I nearly put the television in actually. But, if you look at bad moments in the past few years, that would probably be the worst. It's the game we will all remember. I mean, we've had some bad results, some surprise upsets, but that really hurt - not so much the score, not the fact that we were playing against Tottenham whom we have this fantastic record against, but the way we were beaten. We were really humbled."

Le Saux recalled the mood at training the next day as one of "embarrassment" and said that Chelsea will be like a "wounded animal" because of that. "I think it can act only as a positive, as a spur. The players on Sunday have something to prove, something to redress. It's going to be a great cup tie, it's going to be electric."

Chelsea can be that, of course, capable of performing "fantastically - and fantastically badly," in Le Saux's frank phrase. Too often they have hidden behind "inconsistent", though, and Le Saux made an instructive comparison with his time at Blackburn Rovers, where he won the title.

"What we were at Blackburn was a unit, a real team unit. I suppose, if I'm honest, we haven't had that same discipline and structure at Chelsea since I came back. That's going back to '97. I look at the Blackburn team then and the Chelsea team now and think player for player they are better at Chelsea. But as a team they obviously can't be because Chelsea aren't consistently challenging for the title. We finished fourth, second and first at Blackburn in three consecutive seasons. I'm not saying that 's anybody's fault, I'm not blaming the management, it's part of the way we are. I think if you have the individuals we have, you rely on them to do something.

"Under \ Ranieri I think we have been a lot more disciplined. But I still think we have to work so hard to score. Our system doesn't score us goals, it's our players, does that make sense? I think the manager is really striving. He's really passionate, he thinks about it so much it hurts. It puzzles him."

Claudio has company.

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