James Milner said yesterday that he was grateful for the team spirit within the England football squad as Kevin Pietersen’s autobiography sparks a fresh round of recriminations among the nation’s cricketers.

Pietersen has sparked further controversy with strong criticism of a number of his former teammates but Milner said that was a world away from the football team — where the strength of friendships had helped them come through the tough times.

“You’re always going to get the same answer from players, no one will say there’s a terrible atmosphere, but honestly they are a great bunch of lads,” Milner said.

“A lot of the players have played together at club level or in the youth set-up and its a tight-knit group. There are always people sat there for a long time after dinner chatting away and enjoying each other’s company and that’s what you need going into tournaments and coming out of bad times in tournaments.

“That’s when you need your team spirit. And going away to Switzerland, very highly-ranked, had a good tournament, and the talk around the England team wasn’t great going into that game and people saying what a difficult game it was and that’s when you need your team spirit to

come through to go there and get a result and we did that and played very well.

“Teams with less spirit and less togetherness might not have done that.”

Milner credits that same atmosphere among the players and coaches with helping the next generation of England players settle immediately within the squad.

Fabian Delph — who missed training yesterday but should be fit to face San Marino — impressed after his first call-up last month, particularly as a starter in the 2-0 win in Switzerland.

“It was a tough game to come into and he played really well, which shows what quality there is in depth, and if the players that are coming in feel comfortable to play straight away as well as he did that shows the manager and the coaches are making them feel comfortable.”

After rising to the challenge of Switzerland, England might be forgiven for overlooking traditional whipping boys San Marino in their next qualifier tomorrow evening but Milner is keen to make sure there are no backward steps.

“We can’t let our standards drop,” he said. “Everyone knows this is a game we should win and that’s not being disrespectful. But when teams come and sit it’s not easy to break them down. The biggest thing is not letting standards drop even against a lesser opposition. We want to keep improving.”