Shak

Could see Kvaratskhelia being the marquee summer signing. Hard to see Napoli selling in January but he seems perfect for what Howe wants us to do. Absolutely dynamite with the ball at his feet but will also run his bollocks off when we don't have the ball. Could see ASM being moved on to balance the books at least somewhat.

What sort of allowance do they get in terms of time to stay in their country and celebrate? Imagine how grim it'll be for them to come back to Europe and start training again. These I'll be the greatest, most memorable days of their lives. I'd insist on getting everything I could from it, try to visit every fucking primary school in the country.

7th would be a pretty big disappointment, at this point. Looking at the last few seasons, the magic number of points for a top four finish fluctuates quite a bit year to year. 4th places finisher the last ten years has been 71 67 66 71 75 76 66 70 79 73 Anything in the 70s and we're gonna have a real shot. 40 points from the next 23 games would get us to 70. That's a bit of a drop off from our 2 points per game pace that we're on, still not easy but doable!

I thought CF was his strongest position?

There were some rumours that teams were looking at Wood, weren't there? Potentially getting in Thuram to replace Wood in the squad and breaking relatively even from the deal would be hilarious. Thuram looks decent like and seems like he's versatile enough to play anywhere across the front three. Absolutely the ideal kind of player we should be adding as he'll add depth to all of the front three positions.

Aye, definitely excited to see more of him with Wilson or Isak as the CF instead of Wood. When he does get his head up he plays some tasty little passes at times.

Probably be the same team as last night, tend to agree. I'd stick with Willock over Longstaff personally but I can see the argument. If we do go for a Joelinton, Bruno, Willock trio I'd be interested in seeing Joelinton on the right side of that trio. Willock seems to play much better when he's on the left side.

Feel like us winning or the game being a draw is a fair bit more likely than Leicester winning so that just doesn't make sense, to me. Especially when you consider that it's giving up the chance of three points to secure one. Particularly given how hard we've been to beat all year anyway.

In the sense that you'd be reasonably satisfied if the game ended in a draw or that if offered a point now you'd accept it?

It's a surprise to me that Target hasn't worked his way back into the team. He's probably better defensively than he is going forward so asking him to do what Burn does when we have the ball and form part of a flat back three doesn't seem like it would be at all hard for him. Would allow us to be much more flexible within a game, switching to him being more of an attacking full back if we're struggling to create and want to change it up for ten minutes or so or if we need to chase the game late.

Presume the only question mark is whether we'll start Longstaff or ASM. Joelinton playing in CM or LW depending on the choice that's made there. Assuming he's fully fit, I'd hope we go for ASM but would understand Longstaff getting the nod. Can see the logic in leaving Joelinton on the left against a team who can play a bit like Leicester can, him along with Wilson and Almiron is such a relentless trio to press high and get the ball back. I just don't know if Allan is ever gonna get there in that regard and it's always gonna be something that'll have to be taken into consideration. He needs to be absolutely dynamite in attack to justify what we lose in pressing.

Basically fielding the strongest team we can, that. Wilson in for Wood the only change from the team that beat Chelsea, I think.

God I hope Tina Turner is still alive and they give her a chance at redemption from the penalty spot in the opening ceremony. Like, if that's at all possible they better do it.

Aye Dublin in particular has a huge Brazilian population but any of the cities and bigger towns you'll find a pretty decent amount of them. Small town about 15 minutes from me called Gort was where it all started about 15 years ago, a few guys came over from a meat factory in Brazil that closed down to work for the guy who owned another factory here. They did quite well and more followed. Town only has three or four thousand people but I think to this day nearly half of them are Brazilian, at one point I believe the population there was over 50% Brazilian. One funny side effect was the local soccer team's sudden upturn in fortunes after dozens of Brazilian lads in their 20s started to live there. The image of a bunch of hungover Irish lads showing up to the Sunday league to be unexpectedly faced with a team of Brazilians representing a little farm town in the west of Ireland always gets me

We're about 10 years away from our massive Brazilian population starting to pay off, I predict. We'll see who's laughing then.

Dunno what you're talking about, mate. Set us off to romp our way to third in the group, going undefeated the rest of the campaign and pipping Luxembourg on goal difference. Sealed on the last day by beating them in their own home, avenging the hard fought loss in Dublin. Went into Luxembourg and played them off the park, frankly. Duffy the hero again with the opening goal in a 3-0.

Best/Favourite match: The Final Best/Favourite goal: Di Maria in the final Best/Favourite player: Messi Best/Favourite moment for your team: Shane Duffy scoring a late equaliser at home to Azerbaijan to get Ireland's first point of the qualifying group stage in our fourth game of the campaign. Was such a proud moment after they'd been unlucky to lose by one goal margins away to Serbia and Portugal and at home to Luxembourg. Best/Favourite 'other' moment: Korea's late winner to get through the group stage. Worst/Least favourite moment/anything: Brazil going out undeservedly to Croatia and robbing us of the ideal semi-final.

Would love to know what he said to his team at full time in the Netherlands match and yesterday. Both games they had in the bag and then out of nowhere they conceded two goals to force extra time. You could see yesterday their heads were gone, really thought France would win it after they equalised. They were all over the shop against Netherlands too before the equaliser. Yet remarkably in both games Argentina were comfortably the better side in extra time. Incredible job by him.

Yeah I don't think this will be the last winter World Cup. Worked out fine really. I'm hoping that the World Cups of the future will follow the model we're seeing in 2026, with them being shared across multiple countries. The practice of building stadiums that immediately become useless once the tournament ends has to stop.

I'll be honest I don't see myself remembering that.

Aye, when he went through I thought this was the tragic ending we'd all feared was inevitable. Would have been incredible had Lauturo buried the header up the other end when they broke forward right after.

Foiled in his attempts to stop Messi winning the trophy, Lauturo is now trying to ruin his post victory celebration pictures

Thought the ref was genuinely a huge part of why the game was as good as it was. Anything borderline he just told them to get on with it. Football is supposed to be a physical game and it felt like it today. So many people seem to think going down when you are contacted should entitle you to a free kick and it just makes for such stop start shitty games so often. Plenty of refs would have blown for a foul on Messi for that second France goal and it would have cost us a wonderful goal from Mbappe.

Dunno, in Fernandez and MacCallister they've got a couple of quality CMs and if Scaloni stays put you figure they'll show up and be a well organised team that's hard to beat. Contending will come down to whether Alvarez can turn into a top class CF. Doubt they'll be favourites any time soon but could see them being dark horses.

Imagine if that cross nobody got a touch on had snuck in right at the death and he'd scored 4 and the last minute winner