The Manchester United defender points to the example of shunned striker Michael Owen as an example of Capello not being swayed by reputation and being only concerned with current form and fitness.

Owen was again overlooked when Darren Bent withdrew from the squad today after suffering a knee tendon injury, with Aston Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor called up for tomorrow's World Cup qualifier against Ukraine at Wembley.

Ferdinand said: "There can be no complacency in this squad. Look at Michael Owen. He's got 40 goals in 89 appearances for England.

"You'd have said Michael was bang on to get 100 caps two or three years ago and that it would be a given thing that he'd be in every squad when he was fit.

"But this manager has come in and he's seeing things from a different angle.

"If you're not fit enough, or you're playing games, or you're not on form, you won't get in the squad - and rightly so. That's the way it has got to be.

"Look at what he's won. You don't win what he's won by having a lot of sentiment. I think it's good. It keeps the hunger in your belly, the desire and the passion.

"If you get into the situation where people are almost not worried about the squad coming out, because they're expecting always to be in the squad, then that's a bad place to start from. It's better if people are on their toes."

Ferdinand, who has recovered from a back problem to face Ukraine, added: "You can't say anyone in this team is guaranteed to be in the team.

"If you look back over the last 20 or 25 years, you could say there have been four or five players who it didn't really matter if they played poorly. They'd always get the shirt.

"The fear of losing your place is all you think about. That's all I was thinking about after missing the match against Slovakia, that someone else (Matthew Upson) was getting an opportunity to stake their claim.

"I wanted to be pushing my claim by being out there playing."

Ferdinand admitted that previous squads had also got carried away with the hype and expectation that surrounds England to do well - another factor squashed by Capello.

Ferdinand said: "It's great people are hyping us up, expecting us to produce, but our main pressure comes from us within. As a collective team. We want to win games. For me, everything else is a blur.

"We get on with what we're doing. The only difference now is that the environment we're in now means no one is allowed to get carried away with it.

"There's no chance of this squad getting too big for our boots or people believing the hype. We don't look at what is being said on the outside and take it in to my own mind-set.

"In the past, maybe the media have had a stranglehold on the squads, in terms of our outlook and expectations of ourselves. Maybe there's been a possibility in the past that the outside attention has had an effect on the squad.

"This manager is very good and that can't happen in this squad. It won't happen. The manager's good at that. He's been through the mire, through every scenario that can be put in front of him. He deals with it in his own way.

"If we're not focused and adhering to his plans, there's a strong possibility that you won't play. That's the mechanism we're working from."