These damn permutations are going to be the death of us. Thankfully, things have started to sort themselves out and we'll know our fate, in terms of seeding by Tuesday night. The final round of group stage qualifiers take place and Ireland's seeding hopes rest in the hands of the likes Turkey, Croatia and Cyprus.
If you want to take a look at a longer explanation of it all, including best and worst case scenario, then you can see that here. For now, we'll just delve into the crux of the matter. What Ireland need from tonight's results to gain one of those coveted seeded play-off spots.
Monday's results
After Ireland's loss to Poland, there was still a multitude of possibilities concerning the teams that would join us in the play-offs. After Monday's results, that's cut down significantly. Yet again, here's the third place table as it stands.
Ukraine, Sweden and Slovenia joined Ireland, Denmark and Hungary as third place finishers. Ukraine's defeat to Spain now means it's almost certain that Hungary will get automatic qualification as best third place finishers. So that means there's three groups left to be decided tonight.
The groups that matter
As bad as they've been we don't want the Netherlands to leapfrog Turkey into third spot. Turkey face Iceland at home tonight while the Dutch host the Czechs. Turkey are behind us in the rankings as things stand but they would go ahead of us with a win so the crux of the matter is that we need a draw between Turkey and Iceland.
Cyrpus to beat Bosnia would be ideal for Ireland here. The two teams face each other in Nicosia tonight and it could be winner takes all depending on Israel's clash with Belgium. It's anyone but Bosnia in terms of Ireland's hopes of a seeded spot so a win for Cyprus would be the best option for us.
Italy vs Norway is the big one here. A win for the Italians and Croatia beating Malta would see the Norway (ranked below us) drop into third and Croatia (ranked above us) gain an automatic qualification spot.
So where does all that leave Ireland? As things stand the seedings would look like this: (unofficial rankings in brackets)
Seeded: Ukraine (9), Croatia (13), Bosnia (14), Sweden (18).
Unseeded: Denmark (20), Ireland (21), Turkey (25), Slovenia (28).
That means we need two teams to drop out of the seedings and none to jump in (other than Ireland of course). In other words we need all of the following to happen.
Group A: We need Turkey and Iceland to draw.
Group B: Cyprus to beat Bosnia or Cyprus and Bosnia to draw and Israel to beat Belgium.
Group H: Italy to beat Norway and Croatia to beat Malta.
