Texas Pete

You don’t think Tierney will play?

I don’t think it’s that simple at all and I doubt this will happen. McTominay into midfield and Cooper at centre half would be my guess. Will certainly be interesting to see what Clarke does.

I’m pretty sure they said the same thing when Fleck tested positive then all of a sudden six players were left behind in Spain “as a precaution”. I’m taking nothing for granted until the team is announced tomorrow.

I don’t think a positive result can be overruled by a negative one.

There’s no doubt Gilmour being out is a blow but if it is true that there are no close contacts then we may have dodged a bullet here. If there are close contacts and we lose 6/7 players we are pretty much Donald Ducked.

A false positive possibly? Not sure if he has any symptoms.

To have a better chance of getting to the quarter finals? Football players have pride in performance. The teams will want to play well and they will want to score goals. Ukraine might play for a draw but I’m sure Austria will be trying to win the game. They definitely won’t take as many risks as they would if they were in our position but they won’t be passing the ball around like they did in 1982.

I doubt Austria would be happy with a draw. They could potentially go out with 4 points and a goal difference of 0. Unlikely but possible. They would also likely have a more favourable draw if they qualify automatically in second place.

Netherlands and Italy have already won their groups and Belgium only need a draw to win theirs. France will definitely want to win their last game but we would also need another result to go our way on that group if we win and finish third.

If we don’t score against Croatia then we can have no complaints and will be deservedly eliminated.

You’d hope so. Belgium will likely rest a few players and they did look pretty average without KDB and Eden Hazard in the first half against Denmark but the Danes were fired up and are a better team than Finland. What will be will be though as they say and if we do beat Croatia and go out then we can just add it to our long list of sob stories.

I wasn’t asked for ID at either of our first 2 games but I took by licence. I’ll be taking it again on Tuesday just in case but I doubt they’ll ask for it.

I don’t think there’s any need to worry yet. If we win on Tuesday and England lose we could still finish second in the group. Even if England don’t lose we will be highly unlikely to go out as 4 points should be enough to go through as a best placed third place. We already know a 2 goal victory would be enough for at least 5th best third place finisher but as long as 2 of the following happens we would go through with any victory: Group B Finland lose to Belgium or Russia fail to beat Denmark Group C Ukraine v Austria does not end in a draw (a draw in this match is not the forgone conclusion that some people think) Group E Poland fail to beat Sweden Group F France beat Portugal and Hungary fail to beat Germany or Hungary beat Germany and France beat Portugal or Hungary fail to beat Germany and Portugal beat France by 3 clear goals There are probably other permutations that would see it a go through with a victory of any sort (but particularly a victory by 2 clear goals) but I need a lie down after coming up with these ones. The main thing we need to worry about is beating Croatia. If we do that and it’s not enough to go through then so be it.

I don’t think this is true.

Yes but if three teams are tied it’s not the head to head between 2 teams that counts it’s the points gained in the matches between the three teams which would be 3 points each. I haven’t worked out the permutations for that group as I don’t really care but it is likely that Denmark could still go through in second with a big win against Russia.

For Denmark to finish second Belgium would need to beat Finland.

I doubt Finland will beat Belgium even if Belgium rest a good few players. Even if they do there’s no need to press the panic button yet.

I’m not convinced it will be exactly the same starting 11. It’s a different type of game than the one at Wembley. We are at home and anything less than a win won’t do. Clarke set us up to negate England’s attacking prowess which worked perfectly but we are going to have to really go for it at times during this match. OK, we can’t go hell for leather or we will leave ourselves exposed at the back but I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of changes are made. McTominay moved back into midfield possibly?

Whoever it is has only joined to sell his tickets by the look of it.

Austria won’t play for a draw. That would be a bit risky and surely they would prefer to finish second? Ukraine would be delighted with a draw but that doesn’t mean they’ll play for one either.

We’ll just have to Take it as it Comes. Hopefully we’ll win by a couple of goals and England will lose and we can finish second and Break on Through to the last 16.

2-0 to us and 1-0 to the Czechs would do I think and is also slightly more realistic.

A minor point but I’m pretty sure the maximum capacity was 12000. Seemed to be large areas of the south stand empty so it was probably corporate tickets that were never available to ordinary punters. It is a bit of a kick in the teeth to SSC members who narrowly missed out on a ticket.

A draw would be better I’d say as it would mean 3 points would definitely be enough to finish above Switzerland on the table of 3rd placed teams. Of course we’d need to beat to beat Croatia and the Czechs to take something tomorrow for us to finish 3rd with 3 points which seems a little unlikely. I think. My head hurts thinking about it.

On the train to Glasgow Central. I haven’t been this nervous about a Scotland game since 1998. I wasn’t even this bad for the playoffs. Let’s hope the players leave nothing on the park and do us proud.