Sliding door moments

[tamthebam]

Duff and Gray find some extra money down the back of the Hibs stand and instead of signing for Aston Villa, Crewe star David Platt joins Hibs instead as he's always wanted to play alongside Joe Tortolano.

He's overlooked by Bobby Robson for World Cup 1990 and instead of being one of Engerlund's stars that year he watches it on telly in a flat in Leith. 

Engerlund fail to reach the semi-finals and there are no Gazza tears.

[RandomGuy.]

10 hours ago, Empty It said:

If Stuart Armstrong cleared the ball against England we'd probably have won a world Cup by now

Worth remembering Englands results around that time.

0-0 v Slovenia

3-0 win v Scotland 

2-2 v Spain

1-0 loss v Germany

2-0 win v Lithuania

Then that draw, then they lost 3-2 to France.

If we'd have won that game i feel like theres a genuine chance the pressure on Southgate wouldve been huge.

[VictorOnopko]

13 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Both of these points rely on every single other subsequent result also going the same way - ie you've just given us the extra points for those games and nothing else.

With the 2002 qualifying, we had started that group extremely well - wins in Latvia and San Marino then a draw away to Croatia. Had we moved on to 10 points from the first four games, we may well have had the momentum to take it forward and actually win the group. We only finished 3 points behind Croatia, who won the group, and that was despite a 0-0 draw with them at Hampden. We might also have been more likely to try to play for a draw in Brussels in the penultimate game, rather than having to chase the win.

With the 2008 group, even a win over Georgia would have left us needing a draw against Italy to qualify, otherwise we'd have been relying on the final group games going our way in the midweek where we weren't playing. Maybe we'd have drawn with Italy at Hampden, but if they'd come needing a win it might not have worked that way. Had we lost that one, France could have still finished ahead of us with a win away to Ukraine - the match actually finished 2-2, but it might have been a different story had they needed a win rather than it being a dead rubber for both teams.

On the 2002 one I was more pointing out that 2nd in the group wouldn't have got us straight to the WC.

Fair point on 2008 - but the Georgia loss put us 3 points down on where we should have been.  Yes, France could have won away in Ukraine rather than drawing 2-2 - and equally we could have got a 1-1 draw against Italy (which was indeed the score on 90 mins).  Georgia away wasn't definitive as there were 2 more rounds of matches - but it broke the back of an otherwise excellent campaign, and we then proceeded to be shite for a long time afterwards.

[Monkey Tennis]

I wasn't even in attendance - I just watched it on telly.  

For some reason though, that Hampden draw with Belgium after we'd gone 2-0 up at the same time they were reduced to the men, was probably just about the most gutted I've ever felt about a football match.  I took weeks to shake it off.

[tamthebam]

2 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

.  I took weeks to shake it off.

Spoiler