Ireland never feared the Low Countries
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Walters wonât feature on Saturday as expected.
I thought Shane Long was fairly poor the other evening and he needs to step up now. He has the raw pace, physique, athleticism, aerial ability but some of the positions he takes up are absolutely bizarre.
Iâm tooling upâŚ
he is a dullard with no footballing brain
A failed stick stick player
Trap never gave Wes the time of day
Wes is a 34 year old who canât get a game with Norwich. Itâs not like he was refusing to play Messi.
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Wesley plays quite consistently for the canaries. 30 odd games for him this yearâŚ
Thanks, 35 appearances this year would be consistent alright.
My two cents ahead of the game:
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They have no full backs. A 30 year old journeyman from the MLS and Vertonghen. They wonât be as adept at getting one of those forward against our narrower midfield as Sweden were.
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Itâs sort of irrelevant whether we have the player in the Walters role on the right or the left. We switched everything around when Walters came off to accommodate McClean and that didnât work out at all but weâd no way of knowing that. Weâre going to leave one full back in loads of time and space - it just happened with Sweden that only one of them was capable of exploiting that.
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I donât know whether we should be more worried about a centre back playing left back trying to get forward or a shitty right back. Either way we should be capable of coping with it. We tried a few players on the right of the diamond after Walters went off in the first game, none of them really got to grips with it. Not helped by the fact that two of them (Hoolahan and McCarthy) were out on their feet.
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Itâs no harm to have Walters ruled out early. We had 3 players all struggling for fitness by the hour mark the other day. We obviously made some mental errors after going 1 up but that was compounded by having too many players struggling for fitness. Canât afford to let that happen again, and OâNeill has a long history in playing injured players in important matches.
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I think Wes should be fine for another hour anyway. So Iâd just go for the one switch with McClean in for Walters. Keep McClean on the left against Ciman and get McCarthy to play a little wider than he did in the second half the other day - same way that Hendrick did, while also getting Long and Hoolahan to press more on the side away from McClean. I think we just simply struggled to get all that switching sides done quickly enough on Monday night and they got a bit lucky exploiting it.
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@Bandage makes a fair point about Long, we need a fair bit more from him. Bizarre things near the end even when we had a couple of throw ins in their half and Long kept coming short, which meant Keane couldnât push up in the middle because they hadnât dropped back to mark Long. He needs to play a specific role much better and not just rely on sprinting around the place, hoping for someone to make a mistake so he can get in on goal. This is particularly important when McClean is also playing and fulfilling a not dissimilar role.
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I donât agree with people saying Clark could do nothing about the goal. I thought it was a tentative and slow reaction, something that happens him regularly at club level. But I wouldnât be changing him now, he was fine in general and we should try and keep that defence together as they played well most of the game and Clark being there allows Brady a small bit more freedom to get forward. If OâShea is the left sided centre back then weâve a huge hole out there when Brady gets forward because OâShea isnât going to wander out wide, and rightly so.
Bullet point summary:
- Swap McClean for Walters
- Work at training on making sure we know how to protect the space and players in front of Coleman
- Keep everything else the way it is
- Work on the strategies now for who is replacing McCarthy and Hoolahan when they tire.
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The lack of width shown by the Belgians the other night was laughable. We need to clean up that nonsense of allowing fullbacks unopposed with the ball deep into our half. Thankfully on the Italian showing Belgium would be allergic to taking advantage of such an obvious gap.
I agree with you @Rocko on the OG. Dipping to head it makes an OG very likely in that situation. He has to think up and out. Sky it with a leg or a knee was his best course of action. Tough to think that way in a pressurised situation but you would expect players at that level would have practiced those scenarios in the past.
I could never be angry at Trap, because he never dropped Manuela Spinelli
Playing 3 or 5 at the back with players that arenât used to that system is a disaster waiting to happen
In summary, we are going to go down to Bordeaux and walk all over the bastards
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Roy Keane in fine for in his presser there. Shot down a Belgian journalist who suggested that Ireland might be favorites with a caustic âI think youâve been drinkingâ.
Also had a cut off Hazard continuously talking about being open to moves from other clubs.
And had a nice few words for the LOI photoshoot done yesterday, saying how important it was to the boys careers, and even his own time with Cobh.
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Ireland never feared Belgium.
As long as Sweden donât beat Italy today then two draws for us will almost certainly put us through.
Weâd be guaranteed 3rd in group and there would most likely be 3rd placed teams in other groups with either fewer points or worse goal difference.
If we go into Italy game just needing one point to qualify Iâd be confident of getting it.
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I totally forgot/didnât ever know about 3rd place being a possibility.
Not certain but think we could qualify by having a better points/GD than third place in another group, yet still have a worse pts/GD than fourth in that same group.
For example, Ukraine are guaranteed bottom of their group now, but if they were to beat Poland 5-0 would end up with better GD than us (if we draw all three games). Yet we could have better record than NI who would be third in that group
1 Like