Donathan

All professional footballers in the UK eat a very healthy diet these days. It goes back to the 90s when Arsene Wenger came to the UK to manage Arsenal and was shocked to find the players hammering the fish suppers every Friday, going on drinking on a Tuesday night, nightclubs after champions league games abroad etc. He brought in dieticians and nutritionists and banned all the junk food and that influence has rubbed across the Scottish and English game.

Nonsense. If he’s keen he should be in the next squad. Does he start in our current best XI? Not for me. But he’s a very strong bench option at least.

Yea you’re right, however it was due to them losing to Wales if I’m not mistaken. The loser of that game was to host us in a friendly so we’d have gone to Cardiff if Austria had won.

This thread has quite rightly pegged Norway as the team who have the potential to be somewhat problematic. To be clear, I think Norway will fail to beat Spain to we will be in anyway even if Norway win on Tuesday and we lose all three games (which we won’t, imo) Georgia on the other hand are a complete gang. This whole idea that they are “no mugs” needs to be consigned to the dustbin.

I don’t think North America would go for this, although it would probably be better to have the likes of Venezuela and Bolivia qualify than some of the Central American diddies that sneak in (especially in the next World Cup when the best 3 teams in CONCACAF qualify automatically). Oceania might have gone for this before they finally got an automatic qualification space. New Zealand are a dead certs to qualify every time now unless Australia rejoin at any point.

You know that the overall group ranking is used to determine seeding pots for the finals draw? We could literally have already won the group and it would be important to continue picking up points. Also the England game will impact our FIFA world ranking which is used for seeding for the World Cup qualifiers draw that is held in just over a year. Dont get me wrong I’m all for throwing in an experiment or two but the nucleus of the side should remain the same and I’d only be taking players out of the lineup if they appear injured or fatigued. Same team as last night for me.

So if my calculations are correct, a Norway/Georgia draw on Tuesday would seal the deal and if that doesn’t happen, the loser of that game would be unable to catch us and it’s just down to Spain and the winner of the Norway/Georgia game as the only two that can catch us. Personally I expect Norway to beat Georgia pretty handily at home. They dominated them in Georgia and were somewhat hard done by to drop 2 points but I think they’ll beat them by 2-3 goals this week. Hope I’m wrong. Even still, Norway would need to win all of their last three which is Spain home and Cyprus away next month and then at Hampden in November. I personally expect Spain to pick up at least a point in Norway (and beat Georgia at home) which would be enough for us so I’m fairly sure we will qualify now even if we completely implode. Thoughts need to turn to trying to win the group. Any win in Spain does the job. We’d go 9 points clear with 9 left to play for and we’d have clinched the head to head tiebreaker. If we get a point in Spain then we probably need to beat either Georgia away or Norway at Hampden to win the group. If we lose by a single goal in Spain then we’d need to beat both Georgia away at Norway at home to win the group. Lose by 2+ goals in Spain and we probably need snookers.

I was planning to watch the game at the pub on holiday but my flight out here was delayed and I ended up being in the air during the match, so having only seen the result, goal scorers and goal times, I’m obviously happy with the result and will absolutely take it but just wanted to come on here and ask about the second half performance? At 3-0 up after half an hour we’d probably have been hoping to absolutely skud them but maybe we took our foot off the gas to ensure we didn’t pick up any injuries.

We will play certain patterns where Porteous is the only true defender. This 5 at the back stuff is simpleton pish.

If you can’t find anywhere, best bet might be a Viaplay subscription and a VPN

Culturally Cyprus is a south-east European country closely aligned with Greece (Northern Cyprus is officially part of the same nation but in practice is run by Turkey), but it is one of a number of countries that lies entirely or partially in Asia will being culturally European. Cyprus, Armenia and Israel are entirely within Asia. Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan all have territory in both Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

I would say a draw or narrow defeat over there is most likely, but us beating them at Hampden wasn’t an accident. Really where this team is at now, qualifying for the euros is a minimum standard. Should be looking to get past the group stages as a realistic aim.

Cyprus is in Asia.

1) So 1 out of 4 didn’t have a world class striker then? So you admit it’s possible to win a tournament without one? 2) Neither Messi nor Mbappe played as central strikers in their winning tournaments. Messi played on the right wing with Alvarez through the middle, and Mbappe played on the left wing with Giroud through the middle. 3) Portugal were shite at Euro 2016 and are probably one of the worst teams in living memory to win a major tournament. They snuck through the group stages with three draws, then two of their knockout stage wins including the final were 1-0 AET wins, a third was on penalties. The only time they actually won a match outright was in the semi finals against a one man Wales team.

As much as our players won't be as used to the heat as the Cyprus guys are, it's worth remembering our team are a hell of a lot more technical than the type of brutes that wilted in the heat of Skopje fifteen years ago, for example. Our team coped fairly well in Norway as much as it was a smash and grab win. I'm confident we'll win by a couple of goals.

That's why I called them all "decent forwards" rather than world beaters. Having said that I think the days of needing a world beating number 9 are in the past now. Spain won Euro 2012 with Fabregas as a false nine, France won the world cup in 2018 and made the final last year with Olivier Giroud who was never world class, Man City won the premier league title multiple times between Aguero's decline and signing Haaland. A lot of the times if you get a forward who's a serious handful to play against, that can allow your wingers and attacking midfielders to hoover up the goals. Ollie Watkins is probably the pick of that bunch for me or possibly Toney if he manages to rebuild his career. Rightly or wrongly there's also the possibility that Mason Greenwood gets back in if he keeps his head down and bangs in the goals for Getafe.

Ivan Toney, Callum Wilson, Ollie Watkins, Eddie Nketiah and Tammy Abraham are all decent forwards but all at least 24 and much older in the case of some (Wilson is 31) Ferguson would be an excellent get for them

Trains are more comfortable for sure, but at least a bus will take you door to door and won't get cancelled at the last minute due to strikes or whatever scotrail's latest excuse is. I'd say I marginally prefer the train but both have advantages.

The Inverness game was the Saturday. Usually the bottom six play their last fixture on Saturday lunchtime and the top six the following day. We were relegated at Kilmarnock the following year also on Saturday lunchtime. SPL relegation dogfight over league 1 any day although I'd actually rate 2004-05 in the championship (well first division at the time) as the most enjoyable season in 35 years of watching Falkirk. We absolutely walked the league by 15 points and unlike two seasons prior, you didn't have the impending sadness of Brockville closing, our manager walking out mid-season or the inevitable feeling that strings would be pulled to deny us our rightful promotion.

I think this new show is going to be featured on both Sky and TNT (new name for BT).

I just realised that if every game is won by the higher ranked team, Fiji will make the semi finals. Fucking mental.

Yeah I agree. As glorious as being the first team (apart from the hosts) to book our place in the finals as early as this coming Tuesday would be, I think we need to play the long game and win the group outright to get a good seeding for the finals. If Spain drop anything against Georgia or Norway then we will win the group with wins in Cyprus and Georgia and at home to Norway, all games you'd have to make us favourites for on current form. The one game we won't be expected to win is the trip to Seville but if Spain drop any more points then we can afford a defeat there and still have the group in our own hands. Technically we can afford a one goal defeat there anyway but if they don't win all their other games then we can afford any defeat and still have the group in our own hands before the last double header, provided we take care of business on Friday. Looking at the last couple of qualifying group stages we probably need 21 points to be sure of being top seeds which means 3 wins out of 4. 20 points (i.e., going undefeated but drawing 2 games) might be enough, especially considering our goal difference is decent so far.

WTF did he expect the service to do? Absolute helmet. Do you get permanently booted out for this sort of thing?

If Dykes is available I have a feeling that Clarke might play Dykes and Adams together up front. I know we've not used that set up in a while and it was a disaster against both Ukraine in the playoff and Croatia in the Euros but those are both much stronger midfield teams with the ability to overrun us. Cyprus are a much weaker team and they focus on long balls rather than playing through the midfield, so I don't necessarily think we can't sacrifice a player to get an extra man on the end of crosses in the box. They'll be hard to break down so crosses will be important. Of course the downside of that is you either need to sacrifice one of McGregor/McTominay/McGinn/Gilmour, or go back to McTominay at RCB. I think the latter is a terrible idea. His main contribution to this campaign has been getting those late arrivals into the penalty box and scoring goals from flick ons, rebounds and second balls. That's never going to work from RCB to we should kibosh that idea. Also the back three of Porteous RCB, Hendry/Hanley CCB and Tierney LCB has only conceded one goal in four games and that was a penalty, so I don't think you really mess with that. I think ultimately he might stick with 3-5-1-1 but with the option of chucking a second striker on in the second half if we are struggling to break them down. Remember we need each of the following three results to happen to qualify this week: 1) Scotland beat Cyprus on Friday (80% chance with the bookies) 2) Spain beat Georgia on Friday (80% chance with the bookies) 3) Norway and Georgia draw on Tuesday (no odds available yet)

I wish these discussions were shown during the match