Martin Johnson, the England team manager, said form would be less of a factor than an ability to fit into his system when it came to replacing injured players in next month's autumn internationals, which start against Australia at Twickenham on 7 November.

Riki Flutey, Delon Armitage, Toby Flood and Tom Rees will all be absent next month, while Simon Shaw has yet to feature for Wasps and the Leicester scrum-half, Harry Ellis, has been struggling with injury. "I am not going to mention names, but there are positions up for grabs," said Johnson, on the rfu.com podcast. "Europe always takes play up a level or two and the first round of the Heineken Cup was fantastic while some good rugby was played in the first five rounds of the Guinness Premiership.

"As coaches we are aware of the slots that need filling and we have to fill them with players who can do the job we need: it is not just a question of who is playing well but what are we looking to do and how we want to play and which guys can do those jobs."

England start their three-match series with the Wallabies and end it with New Zealand, two sides who struggled in this year's Tri-Nations. In between comes Argentina, who stand one place above England in the world rankings at sixth.

"Australia are a young team," said Johnson. "As we found a year ago, experience is something you cannot give to a player or a coach. It is a case of coming out of bad times the stronger for it and we have a very good group of players. The Tri-Nations is a hard tournament: the sides play each other three times and Australia did beat South Africa, the No1 side in the world.

"New Zealand have not lost in Britain or Ireland for a long time. They do not lose many games full stop and our players should regard the game as an opportunity. We will have had two hard games in the build-up to the All Blacks and that should put us in a good position. Argentina are a very proud team and, having played them twice last summer, we have the utmost respect for them."