“Have England fans ever been this overjoyed about a draw? It doesn’t matter that England, if it is as good as it wants to believe it is, should do far better than a 1-1 home draw with Ukraine. It also doesn’t matter that the generally sleepy and perfunctory opening salvos in a long and largely uninteresting qualification tournament provided plenty of talking points — namely, Steven Gerrard’s late red card, Tom Cleverley’s hat trick of wasted empty-netters and Frank Lampard converting a penalty for the second straight England game.” ESPN

Lampard’s late penalty salvages draw
“England’s soccer team found a way to quickly dissipate the nation’s summer of sporting success and bring back the gloom. After the Olympics and Paralympics created a feel-good atmosphere in London, the national team returned to Wembley on Tuesday night to play Ukraine and narrowly avoided what would have been its first competitive home loss in five years.” ESPN (Video)

Ukraine pay the penalty as Frank Lampard saves England a point
“Apparently this England side are now officially the third best international team in the world. Or, at least, that is what Fifa would like us to believe through its increasingly perplexing ranking system. The whole process is flawed, to say the least, and certainly on nights like these Roy Hodgson’s players remind everyone that their shortcomings are not merely a matter of fine-tuning.” Guardian (Video)