Reflecting on Ukraine draw

With home advantage, even against a decent Ukrainian side, most people would have 'expected' an England win - and this is a thought that Roy Hodgson shared following the 1-1 draw on Tuesday.

He feels than many will view it as 'not a great performance' but he felt that his players did what was asked about them and deserved the point in the end: 'you are always relieved when you are losing 1-0 and you get a late equaliser. I suppose all games you don't win at home people say it's not a great performance but I didn't think we did that badly.

'We kept at our task. We started poorly in the first 10 minutes but once we got into our stride we had quite good control of the game.

'We went one down to a wonder strike and from then on against a good Ukrainian team you are always going to be up against it but I was pleased with the way we kept playing our football, taking the game to them and creating chances.

'In the end we fully deserved our equaliser so I suppose I'll dodge the question whether it was a good performance or whatever and say that I was very pleased with the way the players went about their task.'

To be honest I thought that we played ok; we showed some nice periods of play at time and patiently went about our business in creating openings.

We definitely worked hard with pretty much everyone putting in a good shift; the work ethic is certainly there to be seen under Hodgson these days.

Defensively we looked a bit suspect at times but all-in-all coped well with what Ukraine threw at us - there is not a keeper around that could have saved their goal, although you could argue we could, and maybe should, have been quicker to close Yevgen Konoplienka down and not allowed him as much time and space on the ball in a potentially dangerous area...

Hodgson was not happy with the referee Cuneyt Cakir though, join the queue Roy!

England came away with five yellow cards and a red, following Steven Gerrard's sending off, with Hodgson of the opinion that Cakir dished out too many cards for too fewer offences that warranted this: 'I thought all the yellow cards were harsh. It was not a game were there were a lot of bad fouls. There were not a lot of fouls full stop.

'There were far too many yellow cards for the fouls that were committed and we certainly got too many.

'Steven Gerrard is certainly very unlucky to be sent off. I don't think the two fouls he was adjudged to have committed were worthy of that sanction.'

England were hit with a few withdrawals before, and during, this international window with Hodgson conceding that we did miss some of these players but was happy with those that he used: 'we did a miss a lot of players but the ones who came in, particularly the three youngsters at the end, acquitted themselves well and it is good for us in the future.

'We are not totally reliant on the old guard. We do have young players coming through who can step up to the plate.

'Welbeck, Sturridge and Bertrand made an impact.'

I am happy enough as I think we probably just about deserved to win but most definitely did not deserve to lose so you cannot be too unhappy with a draw against a decent Ukrainian side to be fair.

Can you?

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