Originally Posted by French Toasht
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They were indeed geysir, thanks.
The yellow cards lasting the duration of the campaign seems very punitive to me. Whilst it is the same for every team, it seems to me come September, October time time next year, squads will be depleted due to suspensions and particularly with our 2nd "week of death" in September 2011, that could be disastrous. For example its very hard to see Richard Dunne going a whole 8 games without picking up a yellow card.
I seem to remember in the 2002 campaign Roy Keane deliberately getting a yellow card in the game before Andorra so as to start again on a clean slate for the games against Holland and Portugal. Unfortunately as the only banker left for us in this group is in the final week, tactical suspensions would not be of that much benefit to us in that scenario. The only possible option to be tactical in that area would be for Dunne to pick up a yellow in the game against Slovakia next month, as his loss in a home game against Macedonia (which really we should be winning whether he is there or not) would not be as keenly felt as the in the week that will ultimately decide our fate next September.
Anyone else think it was very unusual that Pavlyuchenko was on the bench for 70 minutes and Bilyaletdinov for 80 minutes. I know a lot of Everton fans say Bilyaletdinov is hit and miss at times, but has great pace and a serious left foot which you could see causing mayhem for Ireland.
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