Seaman may have been slow to react to Germany's opening goal tonight, but the whole England team were standing in treacle for the first 7 minutes of the game, watching the Germans pass it about, and into the net. If anyone was most to blame for that goal, it was clearly, errr, Sol Campbell.

After that the Arsenal keeper had one dodgy moment, flapping at a cross. But otherwise he was safe as ever, and made one stunning save when the game was poised at 1-1, diving low to his right after seeing it late.

At the other end, Kahn had a mare. Flapping at crosses, failing to organise or instil confidence in his panicking defence, picking up a back-pass, and don't you think Seaman would have stood up better as Owen approached for his 3rd? To be fair to him, it was Kahn who had defended Seaman's reputation in response to Maier's outburst.

When asked about his hattrick after the game, Michael Owen's first thought was to mention Seaman's big save when it was 1-1.

See this BBC report for a detailed head-to-head analysis of the two keeper's performances. Enjoyable reading (except for Richard Wright, perhaps!).

After that awful initial spell, Campbell got his act together and had a solid match alongside Rio Ferdinand, although it was Ferdinand who caught the eye more. Now that Campbell has followed Rio in escaping to a club which can take him to the next level, we'll be seeing a similar improvement in Sol's play over the course of this season. Let's hope so anyway. And playing in games like this will do his development no harm.

Ashley Cole made a few good runs forward and cropped up to make some telling contributions in defence too. He looked the most likely to get himself in disciplinary trouble, but just managed to stay the right side of the line. And one of those hairy moments could have been quite influential, when he clattered the black sub (Gerald something) who'd been looking like a threat since he came on.

Oh yeah, England won 5-1 (but you knew that).

Earlier the Dutch crashed out 1-0 away to the Republic of Ireland, who scored their goal after being reduced to 10 men. Holland looked like Arsenal - battering the Irish goal endlessly but with no end product. Van Bronckhorst didn't feature till the 71st minute, and didn't do anything of note (I didn't even notice he'd come on!).

Freddie Ljungberg played all 90 minutes of Sweden's 2-1 win in Macedonia (goals from Henrik Larsson & Patrik Andersson, the former a free-kick equaliser dropped into his own net by the Macedonia keeper). The win means Sweden are guaranteed a play-off place at least, and a draw in their next game away to Turkey should be enough to clinch automatic qualification.

And Oleg Luzhny played the full 90 minutes of the Ukraine's 2-0 win in Belarus (2 goals from Shevchenko). But Poland's win means they're guaranteed to finish top and Luzhny's team could be needing a result in the last game, in Poland, in order to be sure of even a play-off place. If, as expected, Poland beat Belarus and the Ukraine beat Armenia in next week's games then that pressure will be off, and Oleg will be facing a play-off against England or Germany.

Thanks to ArseWeb reader Robbie Doyle for pointing out that another Arsenal player played a key role in a big game. Striker Graham Barrett shone for the Republic of Ireland's U21s in a 1-1 draw with Holland. He "troubled the Dutch defence with his determined running", according to a newspaper report, and scored the Irish goal. That's 3 in 2 games following a double against Estonia.