Kevin Finnerty

And if we win this game we'll have a 33% winning away record against them but I don't think that stat is really going to tell you much about the relative quality of the two teams in the year 2023.

Clarke was asked in the press conference whether he wanted to seek clarification about the decision and he just said "what's the point, let's move on."

Cautiously optimistic about this one. I don't think the boys deserved anything worse than a draw last night, which is really quite a significant thing to be able to say when we're talking about a competitive away game against Spain. I'm sure the players will all be absolutely fired up to try and make a bit of a statement after such a frustrating experience and who knows, maybe they'll manage to make something happen here.

Yeah it affects the seeding. Pots 1 and 2 are made up of the teams that won their group sorted by their position in the overall ranking (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Honestly think I'd take a Norway win over a Spain one on Sunday. I know we want to just get it over the line but f**k it, we can absolutely get a win in Georgia and we should be able to hold our own back at Hampden too. Those 5 wins have earned us the right not be be shitebags about this. (Ideal result would still be a draw obviously)

Good thing we've got 3 games left to play and only need 1-2 more points (or for Norway to drop any at all), then. For me one of the advantages of getting maximum points from the first five games is that we don't really need to lose our heads about the prospect of maybe getting beaten away by the massively quality pot 1 side. If we take a hiding tonight I'm sure all the miserable doommongers will be crowing about it being a "wake-up call" or a "reality check" as I'm sure they're already itching to do. In the meantime I'll carry on being buzzing for the game and hoping the lads pull off something special.

Worth keeping in mind that you still have to add a Norway win against Spain to this scenario for us to be going into the Georgia game without already being qualified.

People are free to do either or both as far as I care. I think it's fair game to disrespect the monarchy in whatever noisy, disruptive way you feel like without having to follow the Proper Channels and get a card printed up first.

Don't think it can really be overstated how pathetic it is to wring your hands about mocking the death of a woman whose last noteworthy act was paying off the victims of her nonce son to protect him from any form of consequence whatsoever.

Remember when Kurt Zouma was caught on camera abusing his cat and when they brought it up on sky sports Graeme Souness said the sentence "for me the cat did nothing wrong".

I'm glad at least that Norway are playing Spain in the same window that we are, so hopefully that result will go the way you'd expect and we'll have qualification sealed up even if it's a depressing double loss for us. Whereas if Norway were only playing Cyprus in October then playing Spain and us in November, that would make it very, very queasy for us going into that set of games if we hadn't got anything in October.

Is this still about steve clarke saying bye bye to them

To reassure myself about Norway I keep thinking about how their only win in the group so far was at home against Cyprus and involved Norway benefiting from another Haaland penalty as well as becoming the only team in the group to concede a goal to the Cypriots in open play. And that was just after their loss to us when they had everything in the world to prove and what would seem like the ideal opportunity to prove it. With a player as lethal as Haaland on board it's hard to escape the sense of wariness that at some point it's all going to click and they'll get their act together, but it's really hard to see any indication of this so far.

Slightly amusing bit in McGinn's post-match where the interviewer mentions that Mctominay is now "the joint top goalscorer" (meaning across euro qualification) and Mcginn looks a bit surprised and says "Oh well, I hope he takes me over!" as if he thinks she's talking about total goals for Scotland (where JM still has a comfortable 10-goal lead at the moment).

bye bye georgia

Not sure if there's a complete transcript/video of this press conference available, but this is how The Scotsman reported Clarke's comments on Anderson:

I always find myself just laughing out loud when the second goal goes in. The giddiness of the commentators is so infectious.

Front the NT twitter just now.

All the best Steve, please don't get any ideas in your head about retiring or moving on until at least, let's say, 2030. Cheers.

It's hardly a clear-cut piece of algebra like that in reality though, is it. There are going to be different factors at play between Klopp deciding to give meaningful league minutes to a player who's already been in the club set-up for over a year, has been gradually proving his mettle as a first-team player and has just had a very strong pre-season run, versus Clarke weighing up when best to deploy a new squad member into an extremely well-tuned, well-drilled team in the middle of a campaign that's still far from tied up. I do hope and expect that Doak will be on the squad list for September, but the question about when and how to bring him in isn't just about his individual talent level or how Liverpool are currently using him.

Would it be overly optimistic to see this rebranding of Lesser (and the apparent directive to associate the team with the new ground name in match reports etc. as quoted above) as a sign that the club do intend to develop the site further and move back in there in the short-ish term? It seems significant that they're now actually referencing the place as the team's actual home for (I think?) the first time since the announcement of the big hampden deal. What keeps giving me pause though is the ongoing murkiness of the Haughey factor. If Lesser was being renamed to the Nandos Arena or something then that would clearly represent a formal and unambiguous new income stream being established for the club. But with Lord H.'s World of Fridges I can't escape the feeling that this might all be a bit fuzzier than that.

Doaky Doaky Panic

The unspoken premise behind a lot of these sombre condemnations of QP on here seems to be that accepting external investment and using it to try and make your club more competitive is something that's fine and dandy if you've already got a history/expectation of playing in the top two divisions but unforgivably entitled and presumptuous if you don't.

Only at midnight

Love that our already contentious relationship with Georgia has developed a new and exciting layer.