Kevin Keegan's former England assistant coach Peter Beardsley has maintained there is no way Sven-Goran Eriksson will be able to improve the spirit in the national squad.

Beardsley was responding to Football Association chief executive Adam Crozier's revelation of ''divisions'' within the camp that needed to be healed amid claims of rifts between players and high-stakes gambling.

The former England international declared: ''A lot of people say that Eriksson, who please God will end up being a fantastic England coach, will improve a lot of things.

''But one thing that he will not improve is the spirit in the camp. I don't care what anybody says. You ask all the players involved.''

It has become increasingly clear over the past couple of months that various cliques had evolved within the England squad and that matters need to be improved, even if crisis point has hardly been reached.

The Manchester United players formed a distinct group which largely kept itself to itself away from, for example, the more outgoing contingent of former and current Liverpool stars.

There were also at least two other nominal groups, mainly drawn up along the lines of age, club or shared interests, despite inevitable intermingling as well.

But it is whether these are simply cliques of friends, such as those that naturally exist in any work environment or club, or more damaging rifts. That is the crux of the matter.

Crozier's comments, that the players could be ''closer together'', have been taken to indicate that there were emerging concerns at the FA as to not only Keegan's tactical ability but also his ability to unite the squad.

Fostering team spirit was supposed to have been one of the former England coach's main assets, with players having regularly spoken of the improvement in squad morale since the departure of Glenn Hoddle.

Keegan certainly adopted a laid-back approach in attempting to treat his players as adults, allowing them out of the team hotel, organising race evenings and bonding with them often as 'one of the lads'.

Maybe, just like after Hoddle left, this is another case of the truth only becoming clear once an era has ended, with the claim that Keegan was actually too lax casting another damaging shadow over his reign.

Then again, the FA were still determined for him not to resign and it never appeared that the existence of different groups actually went as far as creating damaging rifts or actually harming performances.

Tactics were to blame for those problems and Beardsley was adamant that the players had never turned against Keegan as far as squad morale went.

''The players responded very well to Kevin. If you asked all the players individually what they thought, I'd be very surprised if anybody had a bad thing to say about him,'' he told BBC Radio Five Live.

England defender Phil Neville also spoke out to rubbish the idea of a rift between United and Liverpool players.

''It's unbelievable. I read one story this morning saying that the Liverpool lads don't talk to the United lads,'' he told BBC GMR.

''But that's the biggest load of rubbish I've ever heard.

''The relationship between the supporters probably isn't the best, but in terms of the players there's no problem between them.