Not like McGeady to fall out with a manager…
Read an interview with him recently, seemed to be angling for a route closer to home. I expect to see him either at Villa or Sunderland next season.
Sunderland would be a great move for him, I’d imagine O’Neill would get the very best out of him.
Italy tickets on sale on UEFA Euro 2012 website there now. €120 each -Category 1.
nothing teams for a nothing team with no ambition
dont think mcgeady would be suited to either side to be honest. MON has Larsson (his deadball specialist) and McLean out wide. McGeady can work hard too but MON seems keen on McLean. Feel McGeady would be best suited to a league with players are given a bit more time on the ball and there is a slower tempo.
No player with an ounce of sense should come near Villa at the moment. Lerner will be forced to deal with the disastrous decision to hire McLeish when record low season tickets are issued over the summer. McLeish if he survives until then he definitely wont survive past Xmas.
I expect McLeish if he does stay to try and get Keane and McGeady in over the summer. Ironic that as supposedly it was Lerner putting the foot down over MON signing them a few years back that saw him leave the club. Ireland looks on the way out and Dunne will be too if someone offers him half decent wages. Chance though he could do a Heskey or Beye on it and play out the rest of his contract. Cant see anyone else coming close to matching his wages.
Wasn’t sure where to put this, given the truly shocking spelling in it, perhaps it should have gone into the woeful journalism thread. Friend of the forum Ewan MacKenna takes a look at Trap.
Opinion: It’s time to look at a long, hard look at Trap’s job with Ireland
BACK IN 1996 as An unnamed person was treading water in Atlanta and treading on plenty of toes in the process, there was an unforeseen panic in a studio buried deep within the belly of RTÉ.
On a small screen, Bill O’Herlihy and Gary O’Toole looked on at events that were unfolding just under 4,000 miles away and as journalistic instinct kicked in, they wondered how to deal with the situation and which path to take when the coverage cut back to them.
It was a delicate moment on several levels but in their view there was only one moral direction to take the conversation.
However, by the time they’d made up their minds and Jim Sherwin had finished fawning, any choice was ruthlessly taken away as an order came down from on high. The exact words used were that they were under no circumstances to spoil the mood of national celebration by introducing any tangents.
It was a watershed moment in Irish sports broadcasting and one too symptomatic of our overall attitude.
Too often with Irish sport, that has been the case. While anaylsing others, we don’t step back and forensically analyse ourselves. Our achievements are not open for discussion or debate and while it’s hypocrictial and it’s wrong, we still pat ourselves on the back without the slightest sliver of guilt.
By the end of it all, we fool ourselves into thinking we are special and we are different and we are deserving and we are a story that will gladden the hearts of the wider world. But sometimes the mood of national celebreation does need to be spoiled by the reality of the situation and as we head for the European Championships, we now need to stop with the over-elaborate and unwarranted self-congratulating.
Think about it. As Giovanni Trapattoni gets raised onto a pedastal by a nation baying for a good news story, how must Brian Kerr be feeling?
If Mick McCarthy was shunted along because of all that unpleasentess and Steve Staunton was booted out the door because he was way out of his depth, at least Kerr in the modern pantheon of Irish managers deserves the same sort of credit being thrust upon the Italian for the very simple reason that his performance and his results were every bit as good. But instead, we have been so blinded by the desitnation we have now reached, that we’ve forgotten the journey needs to be dragged into the conversation.
Reaching a major tournament should be a reward for excellence in getting there. Yet how can you describe Trapattoni’s reign as an achievement when so much of what he has done has come down to gaudy luck with little in the way of actual results.
From the average group we just fell over the line and into second place in, we couldn’t compete with a Russian side ranked number 13 in the world, and we couldn’t beat a Slovak side ranked 25 places further back. And when missing out on the last World Cup we failed against an Italian side that finished the tournament outside the world’s top 10 and a French side that finished outside the world’s top 20. Compare that with Kerr who went just as close to making a World Cup.
At the time of missing out on Germany, only a French team ranked fourth and a Swiss side ranked 13th got in our way while his shot at the Europeans was hijacked by early-game defeats under McCarthy.
We aren’t saying Trapattoni has done a poor job, we are just saying he hasn’t done a particuarly splendid job either.
In four years of competitive football thus far, beating Georgia and Cyprus was enough to reach a play-off, while beating Armenia, Macedonia, Andorra and Estonia was enough to reach a major finals. Is that really a cause for such celebration?
This isn’t 2001 and we haven’t just done what seemed impossible against world-class sides. Besides, it’s not like there haven’t been oppurtunities to beat better teams. Indeed in 10 games against Italy, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Russia and Slovakia there hasn’t been a single victory.
What’s more, by getting places, even when taking into account such a list, goes to show the standard of international football and the argument that this is a poor Ireland doesn’t hold up. Relative to the rest, we are as good as we ever were because the game at international level, outside the top handful of teams, is so poor right now that beating a few minnows can get you to a European Championship.
Minimum requirements
When Slovakia and Slovenia are getting to World Cups, that should be our minimum expectation. But the problem right now is this is a quick fix to a nation depressed by their circumstances. It’s a distraction and it’s something we pretend to be proud of when there’s no reason to be.
What’s worse, while hiding from the present, we haven’t been able to see the damage that’s been done to the future of Irish soccer either. We can’t complain about the standard of players we have and the standard of football we are playing if Trapattoni is pushing our best and our most entertaining away. Whatever about Stephen Ireland in the past, you’d wonder whether Seamus Coleman, James McCarthy and James McClean will ever feel committed to the cause again given Trapattoni’s immovable approach to selection and tactics and his extended contract that takes him towards Brazil. There’s only so many times you can humiliate a player and expect him to keep crawling back to serve your cause.
The thing is, Trapattoni cannot lose from here on in. Being at the European Championships is Ireland’s level so he has achieved what should be expected of someone on the normal wages of an international manager, not to mention his. Anything else this summer is a bonus and would be a genuine cause for national celebration. Until then though, there shouldn’t be such a mood to spoil.
Mac was right about Ewan MacKenna.
What a load of cock
My head hurts after reading this bit
If Mick McCarthy was shunted along because of all that unpleasentess and Steve Staunton was booted out the door because he was way out of his depth, at least Kerr in the modern pantheon of Irish managers deserves the same sort of credit being thrust upon the Italian for the very simple reason that his performance and his results were every bit as good. But instead, we have been so blinded by the desitnation we have now reached, that we’ve forgotten the journey needs to be dragged into the conversation.
That’s a tremendously incoherent argument.
He gets all mixed up between praising Kerr for his results and then saying that qualifying for World Cups should be the minimum ambition. He just cherry picks the list of teams when he’s comparing results - completely ignoring Kerr’s results against Israel for example and obviously ignoring the value of a draw away from home too. And that old chestnut of putting in the Montenegro home game in the list when it meant nothing at all.
I think the best bit is near the end though when he talks about McClean and how Trap can’t keep humiliating him. (That’s apart from Coleman and McCarthy who have been far from humiliated and should be pleased with their progress thus far). Ewan would have picked him from the start of the last campaign I suppose.
While Im of the view that the forelock tugging towards Trap is a little embarrassing. Populist opposition to his methods from Dunphy and Mac’s mate in this case always falls down when they go on about the players who should be involved. Coleman had a case last season but none whatsoever this season. McCarthy plays in one of the worst sides in the EPL badly for the most part. McClean was unheard of before Xmas.
Coleman plays on the right of midfield where we have decent options anyway. McClean is coming with a nice burst of sustained form at club level but again we are strong on the left. McCarthy isn’t good enough full stop.
Think he fails to mention that the Kerr side finished fourth in the group.
McCarthy is an excellent player with a big future ahead of him.
Lennon will bring him home in the summer if Wigan go down. Snatching him from the noses of Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Chelsea and Arsenal who were interested in him a few years back before Wigan swooped.
We don’t have the resources to afford McCarthy sadly. Wigan will stay up.
Seems to be plenty of tickets for the Euro’s up on the portal these days. Tickets for Croatia V italy and Croatia V Spain are freely available as are tickets for the final.
No sign of any for the Irish matches though :shakefist:
It is looking like many games in Ukraine won’t sell out. At one stage yesterday you could buy tickets for every group game in Ukraine across all 3 ticket categories (as cheap as €30). Serves UEFA right for taking brides no doubt and for choosing a country without the proper infrastructure to host a major competetion.
Poland could have hosted it on their own and it would have made way more sense from pretty much any angle you want to look at it from.
would be pushed to provide 8 stadiums though. Although the two in Krakow are available and not used except for training.
According to Trap Ricahrd Dunne will be back playing football by the end of the month and should play Villa’s last three games of the season
Surely considering the lack of cover at left back it’s time for Ian Harte to come back in from the cold. A key player in a Reading team ripping it up at the moment. Was picked in the Championship team of the Year for 2010/11 and looks to be on course for it again.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/football/view/242308/Reading-3-Blackpool-1-Ian-Harte-set-on-big-time/
Fair play to Harte but I can just never forgive him for 2002. We’d most likely have ended up world champions only for him.