Not just Ramsey, but Jonny Williams too. Two of our best attacking players out, but we do still have Bale, Allen and our solid defence. If we get 4 points from the games it will be a good result.
BBC - Ramsey ruled out for Wales.
Fixtures-
Thursday, 6th October 2016
19:45 Austria v Wales
19:45 Moldova v Serbia
19:45 Republic of Ireland v Georgia
Sunday, 9th October 2016
17:00 Wales v Georgia
19:45 Moldova v Republic of Ireland
19:45 Serbia v Austria
A really significant double header for Austria in particular.
Not just Ramsey, but Jonny Williams too. Two of our best attacking players out, but we do still have Bale, Allen and our solid defence. If we get 4 points from the games it will be a good result.
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
Qatar 3-0 Serbia in a friendly in midweek. Not sure what sort of team Serbia had out, but hardly a good result.
I did notice that result too. Serbia have much better players than that result suggests, but maybe (hopefully) they will just be poorly organised and set up throughout this campaign.
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
Nobody of note really. Only Mladenovic started against us, assuming it's the same guy. From a quick look I don't even think anybody else made the squad against us, bar Jovanovic who was an unused sub.
LiveScore.com
Kljajic
Petkovic (46' Cirkovic)
Milenkovic (46' Kovacevic)
Miletic (46' Urosevic)
Mladenovic (46' Plavsic)
Poletanovic
Ozegovic (46' Gobeljic)
Ristic (46' Stanojevic)
Jovanovic
Maras
Stankovic
Probably we'll start with Robson-Kanu against Austria. I like Vokes, but he offers less in terms of all-round workrate than HRK. HRK also has the occasional outrageous moment of skill up his sleeve. Vokes is a great option to have though.
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
Actually, just looking at that team list, I think it's a domestic-based Serbian team.
It looks like half the team were making their debuts, and the others had only one cap each.
Or else the entire team was making their debuts, and the wiki articles are so obscure that only half of them are updated yet.
So yeah, I think we can ignore that result actually. Looks ten times worse than our affection for Oman.
Things getting a little tetchy between Austria and Wales. Nice subtle comeback by Coleman it must be said!
Chris Coleman dismisses notion that Wales were ‘lucky’ at Euro 2016
Back from the pub. Obviously I posted the 4 points before the match started, but the result is still satisfactory. However the performance was not remotely good enough, and Austria should probably be the more disappointed team. We just didn't compete in midfield. Ramsey was sorely missed, but it's like we didn't even try to close down in those areas. We sat off basically for the whole game, which was probably OK to start with but then 55 minutes into the game when the Austrians had dominated most of it and we didn't even try to change, was less excusable.
At least we will go into Sunday knowing that a win makes it a very decent start to the group results-wise, and from what I've seen the other teams in what is sure to be a 4-way tussle aren't exactly firing on all cylinders. Austria probably look the best of all the teams right now.
"Life is like a hair on a toilet seat. Sooner or later you are bound to get pi$$ed off."
"In this league, a draw is sometimes as good as a win" - Steve Morison
Have you not seen our games?
Joe Allen got a goal that Bale would be proud of, great strike. Bale turned all Rory Delap for Wales second with a long throw into the box. Despite the frustration of not holding their leads for very long, Bale and Coleman seemed fairly chuffed with the point afterwards, saying they didn't play very well and rode their luck at times. Great point for them though and probably an okay result for us too in terms of keeping our hopes of winning the group alive, maybe not so good for finishing second. BBC's headline was 'Wales held by Austria in qualifier'... I think it's pretty obvious that should have been turned the other way around.
Austria's goalkeeper, Almer, made the best saved I've seen in a long time from a shot/cross that Bale deflected towards the goal with a header. He went off after 58 minutes too, presumably injured. Himself, Hinteregger, Junuzovic and notably Arnautovic are all on yellow cards going to Belgrade on Sunday so another one there and they'll miss our game against them.
Moldova look very weak defensively against Serbia. They seem to have regressed further from previous campaigns.
Moldova will surely attempt to rediscover their Moldovianess when we come to their town.
For the life of me, I haven't a clue where Moldova is.
Not quite Russia, Not quite Romania. But lots of bling.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
Wales 1 up, Georgia just hit the bar. 34 mins gone. Georgia are a tidy outfit, might sneak something from this yet. All very similar to 2 years ago, Scotland looking quite progressive, us scrapping away. It didn't end like that though.
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