Croatia's Niko Kranjcar, right, struggled to create chances in the 1-0 win against Belarus on Saturday.

Photograph: Antonio Bat/EPA

For Niko Kranjcar the weekend must have been like waking up and finding himself still trapped in the nightmare of the last World Cup. In Germany he was Croatia's playmaker and, as there was little play being made, he took most of the criticism for their first-round exit. In Saturday's unimpressive 1-0 win over Belarus, when he replaced the injured Luka Modric as the central of Croatia's troika of attacking midfielders, Tottenham Hotspur's new signing was again reduced to ineffective lurching, struggling to form any sort of connection with Eduardo da Silva or Ivica Olic, the two strikers.

Slaven Bilic, Croatia's coach, spoke today of the impact the loss of the suspended Vedran Corluka will have against England but it is the absence of Modric, a player he developed in the Under-21 side and refers to as "our leader", that will most exercise him before Wednesday's fixture at Wembley.

"Being without Corluka and Modric is a great loss for us," Bilic said. "It is no accident that Corluka played every minute in the last three years in the national team and all of it at a high level. I adore him. If we rank our players by importance, Corluka is in the same level as Modric. We can and we must get over it. Although the two of them are the best this national team have, we are able to get the positive result with a bit of luck. We don't have too much space for any manoeuvres but we will find a solution."

Kranjcar was supposed to be that solution in Modric's absence, as Harry Redknapp will hope him to be at White Hart Lane, but he was desperately sluggish on Saturday. "Our problem against Belarus was lack of creativity," Bilic said, bemoaning the element of the game that Kranjcar was expected to supply, as he is against England.

Perhaps the traumas of 2006, when he was savagely criticised, still haunt him. It did not help that his father, Zlatko, was the manager. "I was in the spotlight from 14 or 15 years old, especially with my dad being the national coach," Kranjcar said. "That wasn't easy. No matter how good you are, people are always going to say he's playing because of his father, especially if you have an off day." Even before the tournament Kranjcar had been singled out as a potential scapegoat with certain elements of the press dubbing him "Debeli" – "Fatty" – because of his supposed lack of fitness.

There was no widespread jeering of him on Saturday but in the later stages there was a regular grumbling of impatience among the home crowd. Perhaps that is only to be expected in the Maksimir: after all, the fans of Dinamo Zagreb, whose home it is, have never really forgiven Kranjcar for deserting them for their arch-rivals Hajduk Split, in 2004-05. The suggestion, though, remains that Kranjcar is not at his best in that central attacking midfield role.

"In my last year at Hajduk I really just played behind the two forwards," he said. "But I like the left. I can see where I'm playing, because you're not always playing backwards. I can play with my back to goal but when you're in that position you're relying on players getting the ball to you and then you have to provide the strikers with the ball. There is great pressure in that position."

Bilic has, in the past, always been supportive. "Some coaches don't seem to like him," he said, "but we haven't had players like this since [Robert] Prosinecki, [Zvonimir] Boban and [Aljosa] Asanovic. He's proved his quality in the national side's toughest games. He has great technique, a good shot and reads the play brilliantly."

It remains to be seen, though, whether he will maintain his faith on Wednesday. The fear for Kranjcar is that the days of Debeli are back.

Jonathan Wilson (Zagreb) - guardian.co.uk