Overview
- Heimir Hallgrímsson named a three-change Ireland starting XI with John Egan, Liam Scales and Finn Azaz returning and Dara O’Shea wearing the captain’s armband after Nathan Collins was ruled out with injury.
- Ralf Rangnick’s Austria arrive top of Group B3 after two 3-1 wins but their squad is weakened by the international retirement of Marko Arnautović and the unavailability or injury of Marcel Sabitzer and Christoph Baumgartner.
- The match kicks off at 7:45pm BST on Thursday, October 1 at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium and will be shown on RTÉ2/RTÉ Player in Ireland plus Amazon Prime pay-per-view in the UK.
- Bookmakers made Austria narrow favourites in pre-match markets and several firms promoted bet-builder offers and sign-up bonuses around the fixture.
- A positive result for Ireland would materially affect promotion chances in Group B3 and test their strong Aviva record, where they are unbeaten in eight matches and have kept recent clean sheets.