Scotland v Rep of Ireland line-ups (now with added subs)
Scotland: Marshall, Whittaker, Russell Martin, Hanley,
Robertson, Maloney, Mulgrew, Brown, Anya, Naismith,
Steven Fletcher.
Subs: Gordon, Chris Martin, Berra, Dorrans,
Bannan, Greer, Darren Fletcher, Burke, Russell, May, Gilks.
Rep of Ireland: Forde, Coleman, Keogh, O’Shea, Ward, McGeady,
Hendrick, Gibson, McClean, Walters, Long.
Subs: Randolph, Clark, Christie, Keane, Meyler, Pilkington, Brady, Quinn, Pearce, Murphy, Given.
Referee: Milorad Mazic (Serbia)
@bglendenning On Radio Scotland just now: fans texting in saying traffic horrendous on outskirts of Glasgow, asking for game to be delayed.
— Jim Douglas (@jimdou77) November 14, 2014
On Sky Sports, their fancy graphic has decided Ireland are playing a 4-2-3-1, with Darron Gibson and Darron Gibson playing as defensive midfielders, Jon Walters and James McClean on the flanks and Aiden McGeady in the hole behind lone striker Shane Long. I’m not so sure that’s how they’ll line up, but we’ll find out soon enough.
Scotland v Republic of Ireland line-ups
Scotland: Marshall; Whittaker, R. Martin, Hanley, Robertson; Brown (c), Mulgrew; Maloney, Naismith, Anya; S. Fletcher.
Republic of Ireland: Forde, Coleman, O’Shea (C), Keogh, Ward, McGeady, Hendrick, Gibson, McClean, Long, Walters
Subs to follow shortly ...
Team news I’ve plucked from the news wires: Republic of Ireland boss Martin O’Neill sprang a surprise when he left skipper Robbie Keane out of the starting line-up for the Euro 2016 qualifier against Scotland at Celtic Park.
Keane, who was last left out of a competitive game for which he was fit against Estonia in 2001, was named among the substitutes as Richard Keogh, Seamus Coleman, Darron Gibson, Jeff Hendrick and Shane Long were drafted into the team which started in Germany last month.
Scotland manager Gordon Strachan added Andrew Robertson and the fit-again Grant Hanley and Charlie Mulgrew to the side which drew 2-2 in Poland with the injured Alan Hutton, as well as Gordon Greer and James Morrison, who has a bug, making way.
Georgia 0-4 Poland. An impressive second half display from Poland spells bad news for Ireland and Scotland, who are three and six points behind the Poles respectively, having played one match fewer. With Germany yet to emerge from the fug of their World Cup hangovcer, defeat tonight could be disastrous for Scotland.
Poland go 4-0 up: Deep in added time, Poland have just bagged another goal against Georgia to go 4-0 up, with all four goals coming in the second half. That’ll put them three points clear of Ireland at the summit of Group D, having played one match more.
Interesting team news
It seems that Robbie Keane won’t be starting for Ireland, who look to have named Shane Long and Jon Walters up front in their (unconfirmed) starting eleven. It looks like a 4-4-2, with Aiden McGeady, Jeff Hendrick, James McClean and Darron Gibson in midfield. Interesting.
Back to the football: So how will this match go? Lord knows but I am looking forward to finding out. It’s a celtic (hard c) derby between two middle-ranking European teams who, let’s face it, aren’t particularly good but are both capable of giving anyone, including World champions Germany, a tough game on their day.
Scotland need a win while Ireland would probably be happy enough with a draw and with sides coached by Martin O’Neill renowned for their caginess on the road, it will be interesting to see if Ireland sit back and try to hit Scotland on the break or get caught up in the atmosphere in what is likely to be a rocking Celtic Park and go all out for the win. Either approach will be fine with me.
Pre-match palaver III: In the most literary and literal example yet of his book-promoting duties causing a distraction in the build-up to an Ireland international, Roy Keane found himself making headlines again this week.
Ireland’s team hotel, The Portmarnock Links in north Dublin was the scene of a bizarre altercation on Wednesday night, when a middle-aged US-based Ireland fan who is close friends with Jack Charlton and his son, asked the Ireland assistant manager to sign a copy of the autobiography he’s been publicising in recent weeks.
Knowing the man and not being a fan of his work, Keane refused to ink the tome with his scrawl, displeasing the autograph-hunter with his not entirely surprising snub. While witness account differ, it seems the jilted reader proceeded to start tearing pages from the precious manuscript and throw them in the air before succumbing to gravity, at which point an ambulance and the police were called. The book-desecrator was taken to hospital and has since been released, while Keane seems to have been exonerated from all blame for any of the entertaining unpleasantness which occurred.
“It’s only a distraction, that’s all it was,” said Martin O’Neill. “There is not much more I can talk about. We’re fine, the players are fine and the man in question is fine.”
Pre-match palaver II: Republic of Ireland players Aiden McGeady and James McCarthy were born and reared in Glasgow and Falkirk respectively, but each both men are eligible to play for the Republic of Ireland through their grandparents and were widely expected to be subjected to a lot of abuse from the home crowd tonight for deserting the country of their birth. McCarthy has had to pull out of the squad through injury, which McGeady will singlehandedly ship the accusations of treachery from his irate compatriots.
Former Scotland international Gordon McQueen threw petrol on the fire earlier this week, saying that he didn’t approve of Scotsmen playing for other countries and hoped the two players would have a horrible time of it tonight. “I’ve got no time for these players,” said the man who played alongside . “You’re born in Glasgow but then you go and play for somebody else? What’s that all about? I’m not having that at all. Will it be hard for them coming back here with Ireland? I really hope so. I hope they get a horrible reception because they deserve it. You’re either Scottish or you’re not Scottish.”
And while Gordon, who was a fine, nails hard player and seems a thoroughly good bloke, is perfectly entitled to his opinion, he did rather undermine his own argument by saying that if “you feel Scottish then you’re Scottish”. Apparently the same logic doesn’t apply to players who “feel” Irish, or indeed have close family who were born and reared in Ireland. Anyway, I’m sure McGeady will take any abuse hurled his way as a compliment. It would almost certainly be worse if Scottish supporters didn’t care who played for.
Pre-Match Palaver I: There’s been quite the to-do in Ireland over the allocation of tickets for this match, with FAI chief executive John Delaney having been highly critical of the 3,209 tickets given to Irish fans by the Scottish FA. Travelling Irish fans have in turn been highly critical of Delaney, whose association have no loyalty scheme in place to ensure hardcore travelling fans who rarely miss away games got tickets for this one.
The upshot? Ireland fans have been buying tickets from the Scottish FA’s website and tonight thousands of them will be sitting cheek by jowl with their Scottish counterparts in Celtic Park . Although it’s unlikely there’ll be any trouble between these like-minded celts who have excellent records for behaving themselves at football matches, Delaney has rather inflamed the situation by suggesting the Scottish FA’s refusal to increase Ireland’s allocation could lead to crowd violence.
“‘Scotland are playing well,” he said. “This is a derby game, it’s a Friday night in Glasgow and there’ll be tension in the air. To have pockets of Irish fans stuck in Scottish areas is not the correct thing to do.”
The mood: Both teams come into this evening’s game hanging five on waves of optimism, with players from both teams reinvigorated and apparently enjoying their international football once again following the vaguely oppressive and authoritarian regimes of Craig Levein and Giovanni Trapattoni respectively.
Former Celtic managers Gordon Strachan and Martin O’Neill are the men in the dug-outs tonight and both will be confident of victory in a game between two evenly matched sides who are each playing with a confident swagger that was conspicuous by its absence from the previous regimes.
If you can correctly call the outcome of this one with any kind of confidence, I hope it stays fine for you. I genuinely haven’t got the foggiest idea how this match will go, but the pig under my arm is wearing a green scarf tonight and I’ll be waving my knobbly stick triumphantly in the event of a Republic of Ireland win.
Good evening everybody. Welcome to our minute-by-minute coverage of tonight’s Euro 2016 Group D qualifier between Scotland and the Republic of Ireland at Celtic Park.
In one of the tournament’s tougher qualification groups, Poland are currently in the second half of their match against Georgia in Tbilisi, where they lead 1-0 2-0 3-0. A win will put them on 10 points, three clear of Ireland, having played one game more. Beneath Ireland in Group D, Germany and Scotland trail them on four points each.
With two teams to qualify automatically and one to go through to a play-off, at least one of those four teams who miss out on qualifying for Uefa’s bloated new 24-team tournament. With Germany entertaining Gibraltar tonight, the next few hours ought to give us a better idea of who will make it to France, but could leave us even more clueless about the final placings of a group that looks set to go to the wire in a three-team scramble for two places behind the World Cup holders.
Kick-off: is at 7.45pm.
Updated
