England 2-1 Hungary: Match Review

By Oliver Sparrow, who was watching the game at Wembley

This was not a good England team performance by any stretch of the imagination. England only won courtesy of two fantastic Steven Gerrard goals, which on most days wouldn’t have gone in. England must also remember that they managed to go one-nil down to a very average international team with no world-class players. A better team would have shut up shop and that would have been it – a one-nil defeat. The fact that their goal was courtesy of a refereeing mistake is beside the point. England should have been in the lead by that stage of the game against such mediocre opposition.

Watching from the sidelines at Wembley, what I noted most about the England team was a general lack of effort or urgency. I understand that this was a friendly game, and that it is only a few days until the start of the new Premier League campaign – but against the backdrop of such a dismal World Cup performance, this was a great opportunity to gee up the England faithful and show them that they’ve still got what it takes on the International stage. Instead, they turned in what was a pretty damp performance, only spiced-up by a couple of sensational strikes from Gerrard.