England line-up: James, Johnson, A.Cole, Gerrard (c), Terry, Lampard, Rooney (J.Cole, 72'), Barry, Upson, Milner, Defoe (Heskey, 86')
Slovenia line-up: Handanovic, Brecko, Suler, Cesar, Koren (c), Ljubijankic (Dedic, 62'), Birsa, Novakovic, Jokic, Kirm (Matavz, 79'), Radosavljevic
England scrape through to the last sixteen by the skin of their teeth, overall it was a much better performance than the other two matches but still not overly convincing. I'm also probably going to be the only Englishman to say it but referee Wolfgang Stark was rather biased in favour of England in the form of yellow cards. England had the first chances but Lampard's free-kick was food and drink to Handanovic and Rooney's shot was deflected wide. Slovenia played rather well and made the defence work hard, Glen Johnson made a poor start to the game giving the ball away and lucky not to have been booked for two mis-timed tackles. England's defence were by no means efficient and gave the ball away quite a few times but due to either poor creativity by Slovenia or decent covering by the defenders, Slovenia couldn't make any danger. England's best player of the game James Milner earned the assist for the England goal after 23 minutes, his beautifully curled cross found Defoe who shinned it from five yards. Handnaovic may have done better as the shot was straight at him and he did get two hands to it, but of course the commentators say it was great contact and a great finish, hooray for bias! The goal did seem to spur England on as they started to dominate possession, but lacked major finishing. The best chance came for Steven Gerrard who, after being teed up by the quiet Rooney, forced two decent saves from Handanovic.
The second half started again with England having good spells of possession and Defoe had the ball in the net again but this he was correctly ruled offside. The referee began to annoy me a bit when he started booking Slovenia players for their first offences which were no worse than Barry's , Johnson's or Joe Cole's however none were cautioned until right at the end in Johnson's case, very much a lack of consistency by the German official, however no other Englishman bar me really cares. Rooney again could have put England two up but his scuffed shot hit the post to round off a poor evening by his standards. Slovenia forced England's defence to produce some very last ditch tackling to keep England ahead and just about managed to do so, leading to England's progress as Slovenia slump out thanks to a late USA winner against Algeria.
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