Finland 1 England 3 – Scoreline hides multitude of sins as woeful Three Lions carry the luck | OneFootball

It ended Finland 1 England 3.

The England team v Finland showed Lee Carsley making just the six (SIX!) changes.

Deciding to play a striker and a goalkeeper on Sunday after the Greece experiment failed.

England lining up in Helsinki with Henderson, Walker, Stones, Guehi, Alexander-Arnold, Rice, Gomes, Palmer, Bellingham, Grealish, Kane.

With Pickford, Colwill, Lewis, Saka, Foden and Gordon, replaced by Henderson, Walker, Guehi,  Gomes, Grealish and Kane.

Nick Pope, Anthony Gordon and Tino Livramento all watched on from the bench as another really poor performance unfolded.

I know I am a broken record but Trent Alexander-Arnold is a disgrace, so half-hearted when defending. This time he was ‘defending’ half-heartedly in the left-back spot. The fact he scored a brilliant free-kick on 74 minutes to make it 2-0, doesn’t change the fact that he is a shocking defender and at least two or three times England could and would have conceded due to him, if they had been playing a decent level team, such as Greece.

Finland are ranked 64th in the world, between Burkina Faso (63rd) and Cape Verde (65th). They went into this game having lost 3-0 to Greece, 2-0 at Wembley and even managed to lose 2-1 at home to the Republic of Ireland. Recently they also lost 4-1 to Wales.

England scored a brilliant goal in the 18th minute, a delicious pass from Gomes and cool finish from Grealish. That was pretty much it in terms of attacking quality until that Alexander-Arnold brilliant free-kick in the 74th minute.

Finland had the better chances and could and should have punished England, this included Jensen missing an open goal from some six yards out.

Watkins and Rice combined for another excellent goal on 84 minutes to somehow give it a 3-0 scoreline, unbelievable considering how poor England were. Anybody who just watches the goals will be thinking this was some performance, in reality they just covered up a  multitude of sins.

You can’t even accuse England of showing they were flat-track bullies, as they for sure didn’t bully Finland. The stats show Finland with 13 shots to England’s 15, 4 corners to England’s 5, 23 touches in the England penalty area compared to 35 for England at the other end. There really was nothing in this match, apart from the quality of finishing. Finland only having a Hoskonen headed goal from a corner in the 87th minute to show for their efforts that should have delivered much more.

The only thing England dominated on was 69% possession but almost all of that was just endless passing in non-threatening areas.

If Trent Alexander-Arnold was at a team in the bottom half of the Premier League he wouldn’t get a game because he is a luxury and a liability in a team that doesn’t dominate. At Liverpool the likes of Virgil van Dijk massively cover for him. Ironically though, he will no doubt be a massive success at Real Madrid when he does the dirty to Liverpool and leaves at the end of the season after running down his contract. With their team of many talents, Alexander-Arnold will love it at Real Madrid as they have the ball most of the time and he will rarely need to defend. Just as well.

Watching this match on Sunday, you have to say that the commentary team matched the England performance, as was the case against Greece.

That Sam Matterface must be by some distance the worst ever commentator, which takes some doing! I also think it is crazy that you have someone like Lee Dixon talking nonsense for 90+ minutes throughout the match. Whilst you have likes of Roy Keane and Ian Wright getting paid fortunes for basically very little, stating the obvious for a few minutes. I don’t like Keane but why not have him or Wright on for the 90+ minutes instead of Dixon who has nothing to offer?

I texted a friend just before Alexander-Arnold scored that free-kick, saying if England end up wining by two or three here, the media will say how brilliant they have been because of the scoreline, but reality so different.

I must have fortune telling skills that I never knew I had…

England confirmed schedule to end of 2024:

Saturday 7 September – Republic of Ireland 0 England 2

Tuesday 10 September – England 2 Finland 0

Thursday 10 October – England 1 Greece 2