Graft not craft the art for Noble

England may not have begun the 2009 UEFA European Under-21 Championship with any real aplomb but having been a man down for an hour they did earn a 2-1 victory against tournament debutants Finland. And the three points, inspirational skipper Mark Noble confirmed, "is all that matters".

Grit
"[Finland] surprised us early on and we knew we weren't playing as well as we can but in tournament football you have to grind out results," Noble said as he collected his Carlsberg Man of the Match award. "We put a lot of hard work in and after Michael [Mancienne] was sent off we got together as a group and said 'We can win this game', and that showed in the end. As a group of players, and a group of friends, we dug it out and got the result. We knew that if we played to our potential we could beat Finland – we didn't today, but still got away with the three points."

Captain's performance
Those three points, earned when Micah Richards crashed in a second-half header, allowed England to steal an early march in Group B after the other game between Germany and Spain ended goalless in Gothenburg. It also maintained Noble's 100 per cent winning record since being handed the captain's armband for last week's 7-0 rout of Azerbaijan, and having led from the front with an assiduous midfield display at Örjans vall, the West Ham United FC youngster has done his hopes of cementing the role no harm. "I'm very pleased with the job he did against Azerbaijan and today as captain," confirmed manager Stuart Pearce. "I'll review [the captaincy] on Thursday when I decide my team but his contribution on and off the pitch is commendable. He's a big character in the team."

Experience
Noble has, of course, invaluable tournament experience. In 2007 the 22-year-old arrived in the Netherlands expecting to be a squad player and departed, three weeks later, a key member of the starting XI. "What happened to me two years ago – in a short space of time I got called into the 21s; sub the first game, ended up playing the rest, the Netherlands scoring in the last couple of minutes to equalise [in the semi-finals] and force extra time, then the penalties. It was too much for me to handle at the time and I got a bit emotional," Noble told uefa.com, making reference to the tears that followed England's elimination after a marathon 32-penalty shoot-out. "I want to win, and if I don't win I'm not happy. I'm happy today.

Winning mentality
"Thinking back it's pretty similar this time around," he added. "We've got a great bunch of lads this year, as we did two years ago, and hopefully we can just go that one step further than we did then and take that trophy back to England. That's why we're here and that's what we want to do. We've got another tough game against Spain on Thursday and we need to play better. Then again, if we don't and get the three points, then we're through to the semi-finals. If we play five games here without playing as well as we can, well I'd take that."