We actually created chances as soon as sturridge came in and upped the tempo.. gerrard off!!! his first booking was nothing ,but that probably was a booking..
1-1 final score Too many inept performances tonight.. I thought Sturridge looked good when he came in.
Ah well, not a bad performance (not great either). Really poor finishing, but probably a fair result, Ukraine looked quite good. A loss would have made this group really difficult, so the equaliser was vital.
1-1 is fair enough, I guess. Both teams had chances which they messed up. I thought Johnson played well. AOC faded badly in the second half. Important not to lose this home game and so a draw is acceptable considering we were behind.
That was awful. Like to be hopeful but really can't understand the point of this formation. Not that good for attacking and easy to defend against and when we defend we are wide open. Central midfield and central defence is very slow too. I guess now we have an English manager we have to expect it to be tougher to qualify
Would have been Gerrard if he hadn't been carded off. I think they both OK against a side that sat back for large stretches of the match. The passing was off but that was largely a matter of the other side working hard to close the space and a lack of movement from the people in front but we had clear cut chances to win and if not for Lescott's idiotic pass in the first half they wouldn't have scored... well, not at THAT point anyway
We still top the Group currently. Other results in our Group San Marino 0 Montenegro 6 Poland 2 Moldova 0 With Montenegro, San Marino and Moldova in this Group I expect England to score lots of goals. A striker's dream Group.
England dropped points at home in euro 2012 qualifiers so its not end of the world, but they will need to beat Poland
I thought Poland were a better team than the Ukraine from watching both teams at the Euro's...this is going to be very tight for top 2 I suspect.
Could be worse, the Welsh shipped 6 to Serbia and the Scots drew at home to Macedonia. I just noticed that Serbia are in the same group as Croatia and Macedonia. The games between Croatia and Serbia are going to be intense.
If you compare the start to the Moldova game to the start of this one, England were extremely slow getting out of blocks tonight. I think that is the fault of the two centre backs, they held the ball too long and allowed Ukraine to press high up pitch and cause unnecessary pressure on England. I think Terry and Cahill are England's best centre back partnership because they are both comfortable on the ball and can make forward runs into space. In the end I think Hodgson's substitutions saved the game, they were spot on, especially bringing Bertrand on for Baines, that was inspired
Gerrard will obviously be out of the next game. But let's face it, we should not miss him considering it is San Marino at Wembley!
It's not a disaster.. At least we didn't resort to hoofball as much as we would have done under previous regimes. And the sweaties drew 1-1 with Macedonia at home, lol. What's funny is some of the comments on the BBC from sweaty supporters stating that they are better than Serbia and have a good qualifying group, where in my eyes Belgium, Croatia and Serbia are all far superior teams.
I'd agree with that. But for all of those who want Rooney dropped head out of sand please now, we were toothless. 2 sitters missed.