While England winning 2-0 generated nothing much more than a shrug around the football world, another qualifier ending in that same scoreline raised lots of eyebrows. Fantastic stuff from the Irish as two goals from Troy Parrott secured a famous win in Dublin and kept their playoff hopes alive. And just for extra craic for the home fans filing out of the Aviva, Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off!
They head to London in third place in Group K, a point behind Albania, who are England's opponents on Sunday. Veljko Paunovic will be in the dugout at Wembley for the first time after taking over on a permanent basis from Dragan Stojkovic, who resigned following a crushing 1-0 defeat at home to Albania on October 11. Zoran Mirkovic oversaw the 3-1 defeat of Andorra but Paunovic now has the tricky task of trying to get maximum points from games against England and Latvia.