Ray is a play who splits Arsenal fans' opinion. Some wonder why he doesn't get more chances for England, some are embarassed that he's picked at all. One thing's for sure - his role at Arsenal is more easily defined, and suited to his limitations, partly because he's surrounded by flair players whose abilities his complements. Sadly for England, Arsenal have more of those players than their country does.

Today Ray had a poor first half going forward, but came into his own in the second, especially after McManaman came on. The familiarity of having a player with those skills alongside him seemed to wake Parlour up, and for the last 20 minutes he was all over the place: tackling back, putting in possibly England's one decent cross, and scoring the winner that should have been. Man-of-the-match contender. Extraordinary.

England were a bit like Arsenal are at times, lots of possession, few clear cut chances, a few scares at the back. Martin Keown was fine at the back, and Seaman had a few moments which will surely have made his detractors think again, if only briefly. Keown was next closest to get a goal for England, only denied by a goal-line clearance by Liverpool's Sammi Hyypia as Wise's free-kick whipped in from the left wing.

The conditions were very difficult, both sides falling foul of the awful pitch and the high winds time and time again. The Finns got away with a few things in the first half, a foul on Cole could have led to a red card and a blatant picking the ball up outside the box incident also.

Even at this early stage, England will now have to be praying that Germany slip up. In the other group match tonight, Greece lost 2-0 in Albania.

Meanwhile, Oleg Luzhny's Ukraine got a good away win in Norway, thanks to a Shevchenko goal. This brief report doesn't mention him, but we assume that Oleg was at right-back.

Freddie Ljungberg's Sweden only managed a nil-nil in Slovakia, see here. It's not a good result, as both Slovakia and Turkey are now 2 points ahead.