NEARLY THERE

After seeing the Welsh beaten by the Irish in the World Cup qualifier and Gareth Bale unable to do anything about it, I wondered if all this was fair.
We might also be without Messi in Russia, perhaps there should be a better way of deciding who gets through to the World Cup Finals? Just pick the national teams with the Golden Boot players??

At the moment the groups are picked by "region" eg UEFA, CONCAF and so on. Heavens knows what goes on in OCEANIA but I managed to play with two 1982 World Cup players from New Zealand in 1984 when I turned out briefly for Christchurch United during a year off in NZ. Club members Bobby Almond and Steve Wooddin were in the 1982 All Whites 1st team squad. Both had English origins and they played for ChCH Utd in National league in 1984. You can imagine what the standard of football was like there then! NZ shared a WC Group with Brazil, Scotland and Russia.

The 2018 selection of the 54 European clubs for the qualifying groups was done by "pots" midst great ceremony and use of FIFA rankings.
SO I have ranked the various opposition in each of the British/Irish groups, just to see what the average rank was and unsurprisingly they were quite close, once totalled and divided by 6.

Group D: Serbia Rank 32, ROI 34, Wales 13, Austria 57, Georgia 103, Moldova 156, = 395 = Average rank 66
Group C: Germany 1,  NIreland 20, Czech Rep 58, Norway 73, Azerbaijan 92, San Marino 204, = 448 = 75
Group F: England 15, Slovakia 19, Scotland 43, Slovenia 55, Lithuania 120, Malta 191,= 443 = 74
+ an odd one to compare:
Group G: Spain 11, Italy 17, Albania 66, Israel 82, Macedonia 101, Liechtenstein 187, = 464 = 77

The 9 group winners qualify:
Belgium 5, Germany 1, Switzerland 7, France 8, Poland 6, Serbia 32, England 15, Iceland 22, Spain 11 with host Russia 64.
The 8 best runners up play in Round 2 home and away, adding 4 winners to the 9. EASY!
from:-
Sweden, Portugal, NIreland, ROI, Denmark, Slovakia, Italy, Greece, Croatia
THERE ARE THREE QUALIFYING GROUPS TO BE DECIDED TODAY:
GROUP A (France or Sweden have one game left each),
B (Switzerland or Portugal to top the group), 
H (Belgium already qualified, Greece should be runner-up)

FAIR BEAR THERE