Ours is the only group that neither the first or second seeds came first or second.
Wales join Romania & Netherlands (most likely) as the three top seeds not to finish in the top two.
Austria, Czech & Bosnia (most likely) as the three second seeds not to finish in the top two.
Poland, Sweden, Northern Ireland, Greece, Serbia all third seeds. With Poland & Serbia topping their group.
Ireland the only 4th seed.
So 6/9 1st seeds
6/9 2nd seeds
5/9 3rd seeds
1/9 4th seeds
Interestingly out of 9 groups only two groups (Spain & England ones) look like theyâll finish with seeds 1 & 2 in position 1 & 2.
Not seething. I was 100% confident weâd beat a Welsh team that, letâs face it, wouldnât get out of the championship. They are a poor side, populated entirely with mediocre championship level hackers.
A Martin of neill team will always have a great chance against such opposition.
I remember when we nearly put the dutch, the best team in the world at that stage, with van Basten and gullit in their pomp, out of the European championships. Now that was a performance for the ages. Beating this Welsh team is akin to beating Huddersfield town. I expected a win. I felt we were a better team.
The Welsh are cunts. Lickspittles, without national pride. Wouldnât vote for independence, theyâd be too busy fumbling in the greasy dole office. Fuck them. Iâm delighted, just not surprised. We shouldnât be making beating that mediocre shower of cloggers akin to brian boru mark 2.
In my opinion.
We should expect to qualify relatively comfortably also over two legs.
Watching it back and I just realised that the Welch (cc @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy) had launched into that really crap and cringey âDonât Take Me Homeâ chant right as Hendrick dispossessed Williams and set about creating the goal. Lovely stuff.
TBF that was a flaky Dutch team with great players, but far from a great âteamâ. The game against Russia was a performance for the ages, the Dutch game was a backs to the wall for the most part encounter, from a team out on the tits at that point.
And if you think our current players match up the likes of Moran, McGrath, Whelan, Houghton, Hughton, Galvin, Aldridge, Sheedy, Stapleton, well youâre not very familiar with the current side, who are game as fuck, but a sum of their parts more than anything else. We shouldnât damn them by comparing them to former patriots.
We had to go away to Wales in a win or bust game once again shorn of a number of important players (Coleman, Long, McCarthy, Walters). The pressure was on and once again MONâs Ireland delivered when they had to.
Joe Allen going off really was the turning point. Both him and Ramsey were very much to the fore in the first half an hour and they was pressure building on us constantly. As soon as he went off and Ramsey had to drop deeper he went completely out of the game and we got a foothold and never looked to be under anywhere near as much sustained pressure
I would suspect this is FIFA Corporate Governance at work. They donât want the appalling vista of one of their traditional big guns like Italy and Portugal getting drawn together and one of them missing out. @horriblecunt is well versed on FIFA Corporate Governance so he might have some insight on this one.
Thereâs a lot of discord with Italy at the minute with Ventura being the prime reason.
Heâs making a lot of bizarre calls, he is persisting with a 4-2-4 tactic which has had little joy so far, he is making some bizarre selection calls - in form players like Zaza, Chiesa, Jorginho are continually overlooked for players who are not really impressing for their clubs.
The results have not been good and confidence is not high about qualification chances. Sweden look like the side to avoid from the second pot though.