World Cup Watch: England v Sweden

1968 was the last time we beat Sweden competitively, and with a Swede in charge, that didn't change last night.

It didn't start well. Sven rested Gerrard and Crouch to try to stop them picking up a ban for the next game, and gave Owen Hargreaves a start; his first since the Swedish defeat 2 years ago. Rooney also started, which had the team looking much more balanced than the previous two starting line-ups.

Only a minute had gone before Owen's injury nightmare continued. His knee twisted and buckled underneath him, and he went down in what can only be described as agony. It looked to me like his medial lateral went, which is one I have done myself, and the pain is like nothing else. They tried to make out he might be ok after a scan, but I'd be surprised if he plays again before Christmas.

Crouch came straight on and after 5 minutes we settled down a bit.

Man of the match was decided in the first half. Joe Cole was stunning again. He did all the running, and was the creator of everything on the pitch. An inspired performance capped by a wonder striker, half volley off his chest, into the top corner. Well deserved.

We did look very good in the first half, but as always, you knew that when Sven got involved at half time, that would change. And it did. We'd barely settled into the second half when Marcus Allback, ex-Villa failure stuck a bullet header in from a corner. Bad marking from the Captain to blame, but 1-1 wasn't the end of the world. It almost was 3 minutes later though, when they got another corner and almost scored a carbon copy. This time Robinson knocked it onto the crossbar, and JT booted it clear.

The Swedes hit the crossbar again mid-half, so we were lucky to get away with it.

We should be concerned that Rio Ferdinand went off injured, but hopefully they caught it early enough for it not to be a problem with 5 days rest. More of a problem was the lumbering mentalist Sol Campbell replacing him. The ship was far from steady in the final 20 minutes.

The only good point about having two injury forced substitutions, is that it prevented Sven from making ridiculous changes. He did his best though. Rooney came off with 20 minutes to go, replaced by Gerrard. Again, Rooney made 70 minutes, but he was quiet. Again, exactly what we wanted in that game. The next game will be different. Performance required.

Joey Cole again lobbed a superb ball onto Gerrard's head, who hammered it into the net. It looked like we were going to finally beat them 2-1, but with 3 minutes to go, a comic defensive display saw the ball bounce into the corner for 2-2.

We still topped the group, avoiding the Germans. Ecuador await us on Sunday in Stuttgart. Assuming we can get past them, it's likely we'll face Portugal or Holland.