International break matches

Yeoldhammer

wouldn't fear meeting them at an England fan

MrsGrey

Both teams want a win, but Ireland need it more than Wales?

Cautious 60-70 mins, then take the handbrake off ;hmm

Lukerz

Thought it was winner takes all? ;hmm

Slaven_Cups_His_Beard

Oh my days Lukerz

Aka mystic meg

grey_til_I_dye

Yeold

Not suggesting you should (although a Wales with a fit Bale would be a close game, imo.)

IronHerb

Bale is Wales.

Come on ROI

grey_til_I_dye

Lukerz said:

Nailed on ROI win tonight.

McClean to score.

Mystic Lukerz!

;wahoo ;scarvire

grey_til_I_dye

This is where Long is such a miss for Ireland.

Wales are leaving huge space at the back, but we have no one with pace to offer a threat.

grey_til_I_dye

Well, it wasn't pretty, but it was pretty effective.

;wahoo ;scarvire

claretandbluesky

Wales caused their own demise there as the keeper put the full back under needless pressure with the worst distribution he could have made and got punished.

Referee once again poor in the last minute as he didn't book Mclean for a blatant yellow card offence which may effect the play off as had he received his second yellow he would have been out of the play off. Refs are getting worse with consistency in my opinion.

Fortuneseeker

May as well give the Minute League Game Crown to Lukerz as I can't compete with that accuracy.

Do you know the next set of winning Lottery numbers?

MrsGrey

Lukerz said:

Thought it was winner takes all? ;hmm

Winner would deffo have got into play offs, but Ireland HAD to win - nothing else would do. But, depending on other results, a mere draw would have got Wales through to the play offs.

OutcastLondoner

Went to Israel v Spain today. Was the worst game I've seen since we played Swansea. 4 people ran onto the pitch, one during the game and three after. People cheered more for Isco than Israel and Palestinians came to support Spain, though some brought Catalan flags. It was all very weird.

I think Yossi had his last game for Israel based on the award he was given at the beginning.

Adam

Outcast

I'm not surprised. The game was a dead rubber for both teams.

In fact, every game in this qualifying campaign would have been pretty much meaningless for Israel since they had both Spain and Italy in the same group!

OutcastLondoner

Adam said:

Outcast

I'm not surprised. The game was a dead rubber for both teams.

In fact, every game in this qualifying campaign would have been pretty much meaningless for Israel since they had both Spain and Italy in the same group!

Yeah but I think Israelis were hoping their team would put on a performance against a big team, which they don't usually get in Jerusalem (the national stadium is near Tel
Aviv). There wasn't much energy to it. The Ultras from the Jerusalem team were also supporting Spain because Israel had an Arab player ;doh

ASLEFshrugged

Greece are virtually guaranteed a place in the playoffs, they're at home to Gibraltar who have lost every game. Bosnia would need to win in Estonia and for a miracle to occur in Athens to have a chance of the playoffs

Switzerland only need a draw with Portugal to qualify, Portugal need a win to avoid the playoffs.

If France beat Belarus then they qualify and Sweden are in the playoffs. If France draw or lose and Sweden beat Holland then Sweden qualify and France are in the playoffs. Holland can only make the playoffs if they beat Sweden 13-0.

All the other European games are meaningless

Hammerex

The equality of some of the groups seem to be miles apart. If you compare
group F, the top three were England, Slovakia, Scotland.
Where as group A consists of France,Sweden, and Holland.
If you were to swap England and France, we would be struggling to Qualify,
probably make the playoffs, and if we didn't win that, we would be looking
for yet another manager.

jay_in_cpt

Luck of the draw ;ok

IronHerb

They are worked on rankings and Holland were ranked 19th in EUROPE hence in Pot 3.
England were ranked 8th, so Pot 1.

ASLEFshrugged

Holland didn't qualify for the 2016 Euros either, they were in pot 1 back then but they lost at home to Iceland and Czech Republic, drew with Turkey and lost away to all three.

Quite amazing that a team who'd got to the World Cup semis in 2014 should fall so far so quickly.

Hammerex

I am sure you are right Iron herb, and having just looked at the rankings, I am
amazed to see that Wales, Slovakia, Austria, Iceland, Poland, etc are all ranked
higher than Holland.
No doubt after England just managed to beat the mighty team of Lithuania, our
ranking will improve even higher.

Yeoldhammer

ASLEFshrugged said:

Greece are virtually guaranteed a place in the playoffs, they're at home to Gibraltar who have lost every game. Bosnia would need to win in Estonia and for a miracle to occur in Athens to have a chance of the playoffs

Switzerland only need a draw with Portugal to qualify, Portugal need a win to avoid the playoffs.

If France beat Belarus then they qualify and Sweden are in the playoffs. If France draw or lose and Sweden beat Holland then Sweden qualify and France are in the playoffs. Holland can only make the playoffs if they beat Sweden 13-0.

All the other European games are meaningless

not quite 13-0. Since they play each other Netherlands need to win 6-0 to over turn the deficit and finish above Sweden. Not going to happen though. The Netherlands look woeful, two tournaments on the trot that they will not have qualified for, they are going to be in some very tough groups for Euro 2020 onwards due to the pot they will fall into.

ASLEFshrugged

Doh. Indeed, probably why I became a train driver rather than go into the ticket office. Actually Holland would need to win 7-0, if they won 6-0 they'd both be on 19pts with a +13 goal difference but Sweden would still go through as they'd be on 26 goals for whereas Holland would only be 25.

As you say, ain't going to happen just as Greece will beat Gibraltar and France will Belarus so the only match worth watching is Portugal v Switzerland (Sky Sports Football / Sky Sports Main Event)

NEoldiron

Aslef, if you had gone into the ticket office, would you be unemployed now?

ASLEFshrugged

NE - very few ticket office people were made redundant, a few that has 20-30 years were given early retirement but most of the redundancies were duty managers and station supervisors.

The ticket office people have been renamed "Customer Service Supervisors" and most were moved to other stations. They said none of them would be moved more than 30 minutes travel from where they currently were, I met a CSS who lives in Epping, she used to be in the ticket office at Holborn but now she has to travel to Ealing Broadway every day, 28 minutes further down the line

Sooooooooooo glad I decided to switch to the train side of the business





Anyway the Aussies beat Syria 2-1 aet

NEoldiron

Aslef, so the savings were in the maintenance of the office buildings, electricity, etc. otherwise why close them.
In your opinion, has the service to the public been improved by their closure?
Lastly, surely being a driver and not a ticket office person is a no-brainer, choo-choo ;wink ;biggrin

ASLEFshrugged

The ticket office closures were a bit of a smoke screen, there's no real savings are the ticket machines are still in use.

The savings were made by cutting jobs from the top station grades, after the dust settled there were 952 less station staff positions although there were 762 more Customer Service Assistants than before.

NEoldiron

So pennies are saved while pounds are wasted in the grand scheme of things ;hmm
What about the other two points. ;wink

OldCastleSwift

Watching the Portugal Switzerland game.

Carvalho is very, very good ;weep

Moore_than_a_nick

Last week the story was the C7R was telling Real Madrid's president to buy Carvalho...

However, we were never close to Sporting's release fee/valuation, it seems.