England manager Fabio Capello believes Darren Bent will be an important figure for his team when they take on Switzerland in a Euro 2012 qualifier at Wembley today.

The Italian believes Bent has improved considerably in the last 12 months, having left him out of his squad for the World Cup last summer, and with Wayne Rooney and Jermain Defoe unavailable through suspension and injury respectively, he is essentially Capello's first-choice frontman to face the Swiss.

Capello said: "I know him very well. In the box, when he sees the ball, he scores goals, I hope on Saturday he will do the same.

"In my career as a manager, some players were not so good when they were 20, 21, 22. But after they improved.

"Sometimes it's important which team you play in, and the relationship with the manager, the private life. It's impossible to know the future. It's important for us that Bent has improved a lot and he is scoring a lot of goals."

Capello defended the decision of some of his squad to go away on holiday before returning to training for this game, and said he wanted his players to take a break next summer prior to the Euro 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine.

He added: "If we play the Euros I don't want to see the players for two weeks, ten days. They will go to holiday then, and after we will start preparations for the Euros.

"I learned a lot at the World Cup, I learned the players are rather tired at the end of the season.

"I think (being) on holiday is good, they recover their forces, their mind energy. It is really important."