Germany 2024

[Billy Jean King]

Triple room booked 13-27 just outside Cologne on a fully cancelable, pay on arrival basis. City centre prices crazy but huge drops just a few miles outside on a train route. No brainer not to have a "place marker". That's probably put the hex on us qualifying now

[accies1874]

Does anyone know the earliest point where we can qualify?

[Pie Of The Month]

Just now, accies1874 said:

Does anyone know the earliest point where we can qualify?

Whilst we're playing England at Hampden on 12th September if we beat Cyprus, Spain beat Georgia and then Norway and Georgia drew as we're playing England.

[accies1874]

Just now, Pie Of The Month said:

Whilst we're playing England at Hampden on 12th September if we beat Cyprus, Spain beat Georgia and then Norway and Georgia drew as we're playing England.

Thank you. As I said yesterday, this would be my preferred option but didn't know it was the first one. I also wasn't planning on going to Cyprus so selfishly glad it can't be there too.

[Brother Blades]

2 hours ago, Pie Of The Month said:

So your son wants to get points for away games he has no intention of going to in order to get above other people in the queue for tickets and you want advice on it?

 No, not at all, I’ve probably worded that poorly. My sons work means that he can be called away at short notice, not looking for pointers to “jump the queue” that would be entirely unfair, what I’m asking is, if you are struggling to get tickets to even begin to start building points is there a starting point? 

[Self-raising Lazarus]

1 minute ago, Brother Blades said:

 No, not at all, I’ve probably worded that poorly. My sons work means that he can be called away at short notice, not looking for pointers to “jump the queue” that would be entirely unfair, what I’m asking is, if you are struggling to get tickets to even begin to start building points is there a starting point? 

Join the SSC, scotland supporters club and buy tickets for home matches you can attend. That gives you a base of points to then get away trips.

[craigkillie]

12 hours ago, DC92 said:

I'd be very surprised if we don't do it now, but 99% seems ludicrously high?

If we beat Cyprus then 99% looks fair enough. If we don't, we have two very tough fixtures and Norway have three winnable games (Georgia and Spain at home, Cyprus away) to close or overcome the gap before the final game. You'd fancy Spain to win their other games. Surely that scenario isn't 1 in 100.

None of those things individually seem improbable, but the odds of them all happening simultaneously are very low. It's a bit like sticking on a 10 fold accumulator, even if each choice on its own seems reasonable, you don't win very often.

There are even not entirely unreasonable scenarios where we could lose the remaining 4 matches and still finish 2nd, and those sort of outcomes have to be factored in too.

 

 

11 hours ago, Donathan said:

The models will price in the very high likelihood of us beating Cyprus.

 

The 99% will fall significantly if we don’t win in Cyprus but probably won’t rise very much at all if we do (not that it has much room to rise, but 98.9% probably just become 99.0% or 99.1% if we win that game)

 

Effectively the model itself is probably baking in a c.95% chance that we’ll win in Cyprus. 

There's no chance their odds of us winning in Cyprus will be anything like 95%. Macedonia's wins away to Germany and Italy in World Cup qualifying were both 7% chances, and both were clearly much more unlikely than us losing to Cyprus.

[Donathan]

3 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

None of those things individually seem improbable, but the odds of them all happening simultaneously are very low. It's a bit like sticking on a 10 fold accumulator, even if each choice on its own seems reasonable, you don't win very often.

There are even not entirely unreasonable scenarios where we could lose the remaining 4 matches and still finish 2nd, and those sort of outcomes have to be factored in too.

 

 

There's no chance their odds of us winning in Cyprus will be anything like 95%. Macedonia's wins away to Germany and Italy in World Cup qualifying were both 7% chances, and both were clearly much more unlikely than us losing to Cyprus.

Absolute nonsense. North Macedonia are a genuinely tricky customer with some very decent players. 
 

Cyprus are absolutely streets below them, and the gap between the minnow countries and the mediocre countries is far bigger than the gap between the elite countries and the second tier. 

[lubo_blaha]

27 minutes ago, Brother Blades said:

 No, not at all, I’ve probably worded that poorly. My sons work means that he can be called away at short notice, not looking for pointers to “jump the queue” that would be entirely unfair, what I’m asking is, if you are struggling to get tickets to even begin to start building points is there a starting point? 

1. Buy tickets for every home game. With a membership you’ll have access to this as long as you keep an eye on the sale dates. Get the campaign match packages to lock in for 4/5 games and buy tickets for friendlies too if there are any. If you don’t miss a home game then it gives you a solid base of 10/11 points.

2. For away games, it’ll need to be further away trips/friendlies/games with a big allocation to get on the ladder. 

3. Buying tickets for away games he won’t attend could result in him losing his membership. They usually have a certain number of tickets required to be picked up in the host city to combat this.

[ClydeTon]

It's a sign*, UEFA know who's going through...

*It's a baw, but still

Edited June 21, 2023 by ClydeTon

[Gordon EF]

7 minutes ago, Donathan said:

Absolute nonsense. North Macedonia are a genuinely tricky customer with some very decent players. 
 

Cyprus are absolutely streets below them, and the gap between the minnow countries and the mediocre countries is far bigger than the gap between the elite countries and the second tier. 

It's the home / away factor at play here, rather than just down to the differences between the teams. iN the most recent Nations League, Cyprus lost 3-0 away to Greece but beat them 1-0 at home. We're still going to be heavy favourites, obviously, but home advantage probably pushes Cyprus to at least 10% chance of winning.

[DC92]

37 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

None of those things individually seem improbable, but the odds of them all happening simultaneously are very low. It's a bit like sticking on a 10 fold accumulator, even if each choice on its own seems reasonable, you don't win very often.

There are even not entirely unreasonable scenarios where we could lose the remaining 4 matches and still finish 2nd, and those sort of outcomes have to be factored in too.

I get that multiplying lots of numbers smaller than one makes a very small number, but 99% (implying that it's basically certain) still felt high given the reasonable prospect of dropping points in Cyprus and the lack of any guaranteed points thereafter. I thought it might be more like 90% or so.

Mind you, having done a quick calculation based on probabilities I pulled out of my arse, it doesn't seem too far off.

It is possible my thinking is influenced by having just watched another of my teams make a (supposed) 1 in 100 f**k-up.

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, Donathan said:

Absolute nonsense. North Macedonia are a genuinely tricky customer with some very decent players. 
 

Cyprus are absolutely streets below them, and the gap between the minnow countries and the mediocre countries is far bigger than the gap between the elite countries and the second tier. 

Italy and Germany were also miles better than us, or at least would have been rated far higher then than we are now, and were both at home. Their probabilities will sit rougly similar to bookies odds, and there is not a chance in hell we will be anything like as short as 1/20 for this game. We'll probably not be much below evens.

North Macedonia only finished 4 places above Cyprus in the most recent Nations League rankings. Macedonia finished 3rd in their League C group, only beating Gibraltar home and away, while Cyprus were only relegated on head-to-head from a group which didn't have any Gibraltar level side in it.

Edited June 21, 2023 by craigkillie

[GMBairn]

1 hour ago, DC92 said:

I get that multiplying lots of numbers smaller than one makes a very small number, but 99% (implying that it's basically certain) still felt high given the reasonable prospect of dropping points in Cyprus and the lack of any guaranteed points thereafter. I thought it might be more like 90% or so.

Mind you, having done a quick calculation based on probabilities I pulled out of my arse, it doesn't seem too far off.

It is possible my thinking is influenced by having just watched another of my teams make a (supposed) 1 in 100 f**k-up.

The odds are probably based on a combination of our likely hood to pick up a couple of points and Norway and/or Georgia's low chance of storming all their remaining games based on their performances so far.

[HuttonDressedAsLahm]

46 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Italy and Germany were also miles better than us, or at least would have been rated far higher then than we are now, and were both at home. Their probabilities will sit rougly similar to bookies odds, and there is not a chance in hell we will be anything like as short as 1/20 for this game. We'll probably not be much below evens.

North Macedonia only finished 4 places above Cyprus in the most recent Nations League rankings. Macedonia finished 3rd in their League C group, only beating Gibraltar home and away, while Cyprus were only relegated on head-to-head from a group which didn't have any Gibraltar level side in it.

At that level, it's very difficult to ascertain just how good some of these countries are, vis-a-vis their results against similar opposition.

Cyprus were also beaten 5-1 by Kosovo.  A team that just handed Andorra a rare point, and can't seem to buy a win against anyone right now.  Then again, Cyprus drew twice with Northern Ireland, but they're also terrible.

I'd previously hand Cyprus down as a 'stuffy' type of side, but they do seem to be going through a difficult patch as their results have been poor, and they offered almost nothing at Hampden.

I'm glad we're playing them in September, and not in June.  That hex is perhaps behind us, but I'd much rather play them early in the season than when injuries, and fatigue has built up.

With regards to the calculations, I understand that We Global Football calculate odds of each game in a similar manner to the bookies.  They then run a few thousand iterations of each league's permutations.  The % is just the number of times that Scotland finished 1st or 2nd in the 1,000+ times they ran Group A's games (appreciate I'm not answering your point, but better than replying twice).

Edited June 21, 2023 by HuttonDressedAsLahm

[Arch Stanton]

 

[lubo_blaha]

2 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

 

Not much use at this stage if you specifically want to watch Scotland.

[welshbairn]

If you have 3750 Euros to spare you can buy a hospitality deal for Scotland's 3 group matches, money back if they don't qualify. Official UEFA partner.

https://www.2024-hospitality.com/en/global/hospitality-packages/follow-my-team/scotland-DA00003892?l1=P100023311&l2=P100023299

[dezz]

I'm going to take the plunge this week and book a flight out. One way flights to Frankfurt on the opening day are still pretty cheap at the moment. 

All going to plan I should be on 12 points by the time the tournament kicks off which should hopefully give me a decent shout at getting tickets...I think!

[101]

14 minutes ago, dezz said:

I'm going to take the plunge this week and book a flight out. One way flights to Frankfurt on the opening day are still pretty cheap at the moment. 

All going to plan I should be on 12 points by the time the tournament kicks off which should hopefully give me a decent shout at getting tickets...I think!

Is it not a massive gamble though that Scotland are in the first game which could be played in Berlin or Munich. Or have I missed Frankfurt being the opening ground?