I don't see it myself. He had one real quality moment, at the beginning of the second half where the ball was fed into feet, he held it up, shimmied and distributed wide on our right. Lovely, but what you'd expect minimum from someone who has been expected to play for the seniors.Originally Posted by Eirambler
That was all I saw - but I didn't see the first 10 mins.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
Not prioritising it at all, it's one specific circumstance for long-term benefit. If we beat Iceland, the players will get a full tournament in the summer. Sitting on the bench against Wales and Bulgaria next month in likely pointless Nations League games won't be much benefit to Parrott and Idah. At least one of them will be sat.
You do realise Italy had Tonali and Cutrone play yesterday even though they're senior players, purely because of how important the game was?
Last edited by ColourfulPeanut; 14/10/2020 at 11:53 AM.
Idah has been anything but sitting on the bench he's started both games he's been available for! Ditto Connolly and Molumby, and likely Parrott if he starts playing for Millwall. Lets see who else gets a game tonight. And yes, it is more beneficial for these players to be in the senior set up (and playing!!) than playing an underage football tournament.
I actually don't think the two you mentioned are certainties for the Italy senior squad just yet. If it was so important why wasn't Mosie Kean there?
Don't tell me you're scared of not beating little Iceland. What happenend to the ol' standby bluster "we should be beating this lot"?
Seeing as we've already lost to them, I would be pretty worried about that match.
It bit the dust when we lost all of our best players to the senior squad.
Last edited by Eirambler; 14/10/2020 at 6:24 PM.
I'm just teasing you.
I don't think Kenny will release those 4 players because they're more than just squad members filling out the senior squad quota.
OK, so Poland could only manage a draw against Bulgaria so I think I've figured out that if we win our last two games (and don't put a cricket score up against Iceland), we need at least one of the following results, in order of likelihood:
- Romania fail to beat Denmark at home
- Belgium fail to win in Bosnia
- Germany lose at home to Wales
- Portugal collapse and pick up fewer than four points at home to Holland, Belarus and Cyprus
We can still top the group if Italy were to draw against Iceland and fail to beat Sweden - could happen, as they could be down to their U16s in a month
Last edited by samhaydenjr; 15/10/2020 at 1:35 AM.
If the Iceland Italy cannot be rescheduled for any reason, then Italy forfeit the game. The only possible date open is Nov 9th, that would result in 3 games for both teams between Nov 9th - 17th. Seeing as the current green list of countries is blank, an enforced rescheduling ain't a simple task. Possibly the game could be played in Ireland on 9th Nov.
Are you sure about this - had a look at the group's there and it reads to me as though two wins definitely qualifies us, any dropped points though and we are probably gone.
Top 5 second place teams qualify - two wins leave us on 16 points in the second place table.
Group 2: France just need another win or 2 draws to finish ahead of us and they still have to play Liechtenstein, so they will beat us.
Group 3: Austria finish with two winnable games, but that would only get them to 15 points, so we would be ahead of them.
Group 4: This is quite an open group - Scotland and Croatia could both get 16 or more points, but only by winning the group. Because they play each other at least one will have to drop points, so second place can't get more than 15 points. In other words, if we win our two games we beat this group.
Group 5: Poland should win their last game v Latvia but this would only get them to 14. Two wins for us beats this group.
Group 6: North Macedonia look most likely to finish second here. Could also be Israel, but neither looks like earning enough points to qualify.
Group 7: it looks like Portugal will be out of reach for us in this group.
Group 8: A home win for Romania against already qualified Denmark should keep them ahead of us. Any slip up means we could finish ahead of them.
Group 9: Belgium need to win in Bosnia to get to 16 so this group is still in play.
We only need to finish ahead of four second placed teams to qualify. If we win the two games I reckon that definitely puts us ahead of Groups 3, 4, 5 and 6 meaning that we would qualify without needing any favours. Of course if we slip up in either game we can probably forget it barring a miracle sequence of results, but it does at least seem to be completely in our own hands at this stage.
Group 2 is not a forgone conclusion
edit -- On closer look it is a lost cause .
Last edited by geysir; 16/10/2020 at 1:14 PM.
There is another scenario - the rest of the games cannot effectively be played out in the november window.
According to Uefa
Iceland are awarded the game v Italy because Italy were the cause of the postponment
The rest of the games are decided by the ancient civilisation method of "drawing lots", because no team is at fault.
Crikey, you're absolutely right and I'm sorry for putting you to so much work - I first thought that in Group 4 we needed Scotland to fail to beat with Croatia to prevent them beating our total, and then I thought a win for Croatia might put them, in a position to pip us and that we would require a draw between the two of them, only to then realize that a Croatia win would likely lead to them topping group 4, with the Czechs coming second and unable to match 16 points in the second-place table. And after about ten minutes I finally came to the conclusion that no scenario would leave the Group 4 runners up with 16 or more points,
At that point I started to write triumphantly that winning our two remaining games would guarantee qualification, only to second-guess myself and get some thought into my head that with Portugal likely overtaking us in the table, we would still need to get ahead of another team apart from Poland. As you noted we only need to pass one team, and two wins would guarantee that we finish above the Poles.
It was late. I was tired (coffee crash probably)
The Iceland v Italy postponed game is rescheduled to Nov 12th. same venue. GUBU.
We really need Italy to get a result there. If they win, then we would potentially only need a point against Iceland rather than making it a must win.
I think only getting a point would probably leave us as one of the lower ranked runners up though, so we'd be unlikely to qualify without two wins. I think it's just a case of winning the two winnable games for us. Similar to what we were saying before the senior game against Slovakia, if we can't beat Iceland at home, bearing in mind that they lost 5-0 in Sweden, we don't deserve to qualify anyway.
Not quite, just -- grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unpredictable.
It's possible in a month of sundays to have playable weather in mid november but that's already happened in mid nov 2013 WC play off v Croatia.
The late October 2008 euro play off v Ireland women is still remembered here as "klakid leik" the frozen ground game. And not just frozen but cut up frozen ground, aided and abetted by the groundsman in not his finest hour, who decided to water the grass pitch in the hours preceding the game. The temp dropped like an anchor just before the game started.
It's a big swing in advantage to Ireland now, the chances for Iceland to get the results needed inside 8 days, traveling under quarantine restrictions across the length of Europe via Dublin to Armenia , would also be in GUBU territory.
Last edited by geysir; 22/10/2020 at 12:44 PM.
Squad announced:
Smallbone injured. McGuinness gets his first call up. Connell included too. Parrott, Obafemi with the 21s as expected. Good enough squad I think. Haven’t checked if Farrugia is injured or dropped...
Bazunu
McGinty
L O’Connor
McNamara
Masterson
Collins
Scales
McGuinness
T O’Connor
Leahy
Coventry
Connell
Knight
Taylor
Ronan
Mandriou
Elbouzedi
Scully
Grant
Ferry
Parrott
Obafemi
Afolabi
Kayode
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