National coach Pietro Ghedin will be instructing his players – for yet another time - to avoid gifting goals to opponents.

The Italian mentor is obviously very disappointed to see his players committing stupid mistakes which end in goals in the opponents’ favour, thus further limiting our remote chances against such top teams.

This has happed with a certain amount of regularity in the last three home matches against Denmark, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

Ghedin insists that this is the main difference between Malta and ‘the others’. He is certainly aware and concedes that his players have made a lot of progress since he took over, but these mistakes are letting everybody down – himself, the players, the MFA and the public.

Today Malta faces a Denmark side which still has a remote chance of making it to the play-offs, but first of all, they need to beat Malta by a huge scoreline – at least seven goals - to be able topple Bulgaria.

The Danes were very unimpressive when they visited Malta in September and it had to be some mistakes – and the element of luck – that paved the way for their 1-2 win.

Last Friday, the Danes were in much better form as it was an added injury time goal that denied them of a win against Italy. They had to be content with a 2-2 draw at the end.

On the other hand, Malta will have to play much better than they did on Friday night against the Czech Republic. It was a miserable performance which ended in a 4-1 defeat.

Ghedin is not expected to make any radical changes to the side.

One big change could be that of goalkeeper Justin Haber who seems to have gone out of form recently. Henry Bonello is waiting for his chance, but this being the last qualifier, Ghedin might opt to retain the experienced Birkirkara goalie between the posts.

I also expect the Italian coach to push Andrei Agius alongside Luke Dimech in the heart of the defence. Agius seems to be the natural replacement for the injured Jonathan Caruana who has not made the trip to Copenhagen.

Also, Andre Schembri will be returning to the side after missing last Friday’s match through suspension. He is expected to take the place of John Mintoff, meaning that Andrew Cohen, one of the few players who did well on Friday, should retain his place in the starting line-up.

The starting line-up should therefore not differ much from the following:

J. Haber, R. Camilleri, A. Agius, L. Dimech, A. Muscat; R. Briffa, R. Muscat, A. Cohen, C. Failla; A. Schembri, M. Mifsud.

Ghedin has the following squad at his disposal:

Goalkeepers: Justin Haber, Henry Bonello.

Defenders: Luke Dimech, Ryan Camilleri, Alex Muscat, Clifford Gatt Baldacchino, Justin Grioli, Andrei Agius.

Midfielders: Clayton Failla, Roderick Briffa, Ryan Fenech, Andrew Cohen, John Mintoff, Rowen Muscat, Edward Herrera, Paul Fenech, Shaun Bajada.

Strikers: Andre Schembri, Terence Vella, Michael Mifsud.