First Up:Bahrain…

It’s that time of the year again where nothing of interest happens in footy except club transfers.

And while there is quite some time until the boys in green take on Bahrain in our third place playoff match (September to be exact) I thought it would be nice to pass the summer with some re-assuring statistics skewed and biased to show your own superiority…you know, the best kind of stats!

In FIFA World Cup Qualifying matches, Bahrain has never defeated Saudi Arabia (never mind the fact that we only played them 3 times total in WCQ matches) with the last coming way back in 2001 in the Bahraini capital of Manama where Saudi Arabia triumphed 4-0.

The last official non friendly game played against Bahrain was at the 2007 AFC Asian Cup where we memorably secured a 4-0 victory with goals coming from Ahmed Al Mousa,Yasser Al Qahtani and a brace from the under-rated Tayseer Al-Jasim.

That’s not to say we should under-estimate Bahrain, they did a great job getting third in a group where Japan and Australia pretty much guaranteed the top two spots automatically and Jose should be wary of complacency amongst the players.

Now for some re-assuring statistics from FIFA:
Head to Head record
Bahrain——Saudi Arabia
5 W 15
8 D 8
24 GS 47