World Cup Qualifying Play-Offs 2nd Legs, Wednesday 18th November

Preamble

The last remaining World Cup places are up for grabs in Europe tomorrow night, and, as ever, this intrepid writer has had his head buried in stats in order to preview these games for y'all. The play-offs are always tense, dramatic occasions, a chance for relative unknowns to become national heroes (in New Zealand, the government are being lobbied to change the name of the national Westpac Stadium to Rory Fallon Park; in 1997, a young Gianluigi Buffon made his Italy debut in a snowy play-off match in Moscow) and for national heroes to become, er, zeroes. Over the last 2 days, this writer has been furiously analysing previous qualifying matches and play-off results (I've been off work with a broken metatarsal), and come to some interesting conclusions:

• Ukraine have never progressed to an international tournament through the play-offs. Indeed, in 6 matches in 3 play-offs, they have won 0, drawn 3 and lost 3. Their 0-0 draw away in Greece was their first draw away from Ukraine in the play-offs, and even that result came thanks to a questionable decision to rule out a Fanis Gekas goal
• Over the course of the 6, 8 or 10 matches (depending on the qualifying format, there have been either 3, 4 or 5 play-off matches in 1998-2006 (there were none for EURO 2008)), there have been, in 4 of the 5 tournaments, 4 home wins. With Portugal and Russia securing home wins in the 1st legs on Saturday, it would be reasonable to assume 2 home wins tomorrow night
• Ireland have a mountain to climb in France. Of the 5 teams to have previously lost the 1st leg of their tie at home, none have managed to qualify, indeed only Scotland have managed any kind of result in the 2nd leg after losing the 1st leg at home. Ireland's play-off record against European nations is also poor- they have now won none of their last 5 play-off matches, and only scored 6 goals in 5 away qualifying matches. They've also failed to beat France in 3 competitive internationals over the last 12 years
• As a general rule, if you lose the 1st leg, you're out. Over the past 12 years, out of 14 teams who have lost the 1st leg of their ties, only Holland have gone on to qualify
• 2nd legs tend to be more open than 1st legs. Over 20 1st legs, an average of 2.45 goals were scored per game. However, in the 2nd legs, this increased to 2.7 goals per game
• Despite the previous stat, don't expect goals galore in the Ukraine v Greece match. Their 4 previous competitive internationals have produced a meagre total of just 6 goals. Consider also Ukraine's defence, which only conceded 6 goals throughout the entire qualifying campaign

So there you have some initial stats to ponder, lovingly computed for y'all by this writer. Full previews of the games to follow