One of the poorest ever England performances produced incredible scenes at Southampton as England twice had to come from behind in the first 45 minutes. Sven Goran Eriksson's side had a shocker of a start going behind after 10 minutes, Artim Sakiri whipping a corner from the right directly into the net. As so often before skipper David Beckham stood up to be counted and drew the scores level 4 minutes later. England had not learned their lesson and more sloppy defending allowed Vanco Trajanov to put Macedonia ahead again. Steven Gerrard's second International goal on 36 minutes pulled the scores level. England did not appear to be too worried at the start of the second half but suffered a blow when goalscorer Steven Gerrard left the field injured to be replaced by Nicky Butt. England huffed and pupped but could not find a winner on a shocking night at Southampton and to round of a terrible night Alan Smith was sent-off in injury time.

Sven Goran Eriksson apparently though England played OK, he said: "We shall not start to cry yet. We were unlucky when they scored a couple of times. Both goals they scored were lucky and we were a bit unlucky. We scored two and had the chance to score many more. We didn't play badly. For long periods we played good football.

"Macedonia could go and win the ball with nine or 10 players and they did it well. We should have won this and deserved to but to win it you have to score more. I don't know how many chances we had - a lot. We should have scored more than twice. It is important to go on working.

"We can do better. There are eight games to play and I think when we went into the qualification for the World Cup it was much worse. We shall not start to cry yet. We have to get back those points in another game."

Asked about David Seaman's mistake, Eriksson said: "I have not asked David about it. I have just seen it live, not on TV yet, but I will. Bad luck."