Originally Posted by
elatedscum
I think it all depends how it goes within the campaign.
Imagine we beat France and Netherlands at home, beat Greece and Gibraltar home and away. All three sides end up on 18 points and we come third on goal difference. Then, we win our playoff semi final against Sweden and get to the playoff final where we face either England or Italy and lose to them on penalties.
We don't qualify. Can't imagine many sane people would be calling for the sack in those circumstances. It does illustrate how ridiculously difficult the draw was and how near impossible the draw was. We're gonna have to get a lot of points off two of the five best teams in the world (probably 6 or 7 points in 4 games) - Northern Ireland as 5th seeds got (Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Kazakstan, NI, San Marino). And there's probably a 50/50 chance that we face one elite team in playoffs like England, if we do make the playoffs.
Alternatively, we could lose home and away against everyone except Gibraltar and luck into a handy playoff draw where we beat Albania in the semi and Montenegro in the final. In that scenario, we'd satisfy the qualification criteria but I'd have far more doubts over Kenny and the team