He will definately be brought in and more than likely capped between now and the Euro’s, whether he is taken is a long shot but he is playing very well for both the 21’s and at club level
[quote=“chewy louie, post: 633883”]He will definately be brought in and more than likely capped between now and the Euro’s, whether he is taken is a long shot but he is playing very well for both the 21’s and at club level
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I think it’ll come too soon for him but time will tell. There’ll be great debate about squad composition as it gets closer to next summer. Trap tends to pick large squads - sometimes 26 or 27 players - but he’ll be restricted to 23 for the tournament. The conventional split is usually 3 goalkeepers, 8 defenders (2 right backs, 4 centre backs, 2 left backs), 8 midfielders (2 right sided players, 4 centre midfielders, 2 left sided players) and 4 strikers. For example, there’s 5 strikers featuring regularly in Keane, Doyle, Long, Walters and Cox so could one of them miss out? Or will he go one short in midfield or defence and rely, for example, on someone like Coleman or Foley covering both a midfield and defensive role. Trap mentioned Pilkington and Tierney of Norwich in his press conference on Saturday.
I think the possibility of Walters from the front men and Ward and Foley from the defence offering cover in midfield (with O’Shea at a push) might just mean that he goes for the 5 up front and leaves out a winger if Fahey is considered a central player. Lawrence isn’t near the team at the moment and the other 3 wingers are way out in front. Would be funny listening to Dunphy if Coleman didn’t make it.
Would not be one bit surprised if Coleman doesn’t make it. Can’t see him taking McCarthy barring a load of injuries and Gibson could well come under pressure as well
Some cutting edge analysis from Lawro here…
What price would you offer me on Coleman making the squad?
[quote=“chewy louie, post: 633886”]Would not be one bit surprised if Coleman doesn’t make it. Can’t see him taking McCarthy barring a load of injuries and Gibson could well come under pressure as well
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As you lads say, we do have a number of players that can play in several positions so it gives him more scope to play around with.
You could conceivably get away with taking 7 defenders given O’Shea offers can play right back, centre back or left back. Even Stephen Kelly has played competitive games in this campaign in both full back positions, albeit he was poor at left back against Armenia. He can even play in the centre at a push, as he did in the friendly in March against Uruguay. Maybe O’Shea, Dunne, St Ledger, O’Dea, Ward, Kelly + 1 more.
Hunt, Duff and McGeady can all play on either flank too so that versatility helps and Walters has played in more withdrawn and wider roles at club level so he could be accommodated too. As things stand, it could be Gibson and McCarthy battling it out for one central midfield spot because Whelan, Andrews and Fahey are all ahead of them at present. Gibson has really failed to grasp his chance and he’s played several competitive games at this stage.
Even money
Fucking hell
McGeady not a regular… More talented midfielders than Whelan available… Trapattoni… well he’s Italian.
WIn, lose or draw they’ll go to a bar… will bring a splash of colour…
It will come down to who performs best in friendlies really in a few positions. I wouldn’t rule out the likes of Tierney and Meyler making their way into starting eleven for our first game in euros either. We are weak enough at fullback and central midfield. Trap won’t be afraid of leaving anyone out and he won’t be sentimental either.
What were Trap’s comments in relation to Pilkington and Tierney Bandage?
But the colour will mostly be green.
[quote=“larryduff, post: 633892”]What were Trap’s comments in relation to Pilkington and Tierney Bandage?
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It was broken English, as usual. He was asked about trying out new players in friendlies and said something like, ‘it is not easy to find another Duff [seemed to use him as an example of a senior & important player] but we look at Pilkington and Tierney’.
Here a piece from Zonal Marking on Ireland’s set up:
Ireland: defensive, and no reason to change
November 16, 2011
Ireland’s most common starting XI during the qualifiers
Giovanni Trapattoni has guided Ireland to their first major tournament for a decade, yet there are still questions about his tactics.
His basic approach barely needs further explanation from the diagram on the left. There’s a standard back four, two hard-working central midfielders, two wingers who run with the ball, with a support player dropping off a main striker. It’s a 4-4-2, a 4-4-1-1 if you like, but near enough the most basic system imaginable in modern football.
Trapattoni’s success has come because he’s accepted the limitations of his side. With Barcelona and Spain dominating club and international football the game has, more than ever, become based around technical quality in the centre of midfield. Good passing when you have the ball, positivity when you don’t have it, and a preference for an open game have become the qualities to aspire to.
Ireland, frankly, don’t have a great deal of technical quality in their midfield. They have a fine goalkeeper, some good defenders, tricky wingers and a good deal of options upfront. In the centre they have Keith Fahey, Keith Andrews, Glenn Whelan, Darren Gibson and James McCarthy. Fahey and Andrews are Championship players, Whelan plays for a club that barely look to pass the ball, Gibson has (slightly harshly) become a figure of fun for non-stop ambitious shooting, whilst McCarthy is talented but barely established in the squad.
Defensive base
Trapattoni, then, has decided upon a negative approach based around getting two banks of four behind the ball, then breaking fairly directly through the wide players and sometimes longer balls to the front two. It has proved successful – Ireland qualified losing only one game from 12 (to group winners Russia), whilst enjoying a particularly good defensive record, with six clean sheets from those 12 matches.
He’s faced criticism for being too defensive, but it’s difficult to see how he can be more proactive given the lack of quality. Aiming for passing game for the sake of it would surely see Ireland undone even against relatively modest sides, and would essentially be shifting the battleground to a zone where Ireland are not particularly strong. Andrews and Whelan are unlikely to scare many opponents, whilst a two-man midfield can often be passed around easily by sides boasting both greater quality and quantity of central midfielders.
Formation
He could change formation to one boasting three central midfielders, of course, and move to a three-man midfield. However, this would mean dropping either Robbie Keane – unlikely, since he’s the captain – or Kevin Doyle, which would Keane to play alone upfront, a role that doesn’t suit him at all.
If the 4-4-2 is your ‘natural’ shape yet you don’t want to be outmanoeuvred easily in midfield, the natural option is to drop deep to prevent space between the lines, or in behind the defence. Whichever way you look at it, playing more attacking football looks suicidal.
The main problem is creativity – the wingers have been inconsistent, but that’s what you have to accept from wide players in a defensive side. They’re starved of the ball, and therefore players are always judged based upon one or two actions. It’s difficult to see how this situation can be improved in terms of he formation or selection; the simple response of ‘playing more attacking’ is more likely to expose the central midfielders than benefit the wide midfielders.
Ireland have a different type of squad to usual. As Miguel Delaney outlines, they don’t have a top-class footballer amongst their ranks but do have decent strength in depth, meaning that asking the side to work well functionally rather than relying on one or two individuals is the right way to go, and probably the only way they can perform above expectations. They don’t have many stars – even Keane and Damien Duff don’t have the pace and spark they did the last time Ireland qualified for a tournament.
“For a start, Messi and Ronaldo don’t have Irish passports,” says winger Stephen Hunt. ”We no longer hit is as high as we can, but we do have a direct style of play. We have good effective players at it…it can come across sometimes from the media that we don’t have a fancy style of play, but we never had. Never, ever had. We had Liam Brady, who was talented. Apart from that, you tell me who has been Ronaldo or Messi for the last 20 years in Ireland?”
Tournament approach
There seems to be an argument that now Ireland have qualified for Euro 2012, they need to break out of their shell and be more positive. In aesthetic terms? Well, that’s down to personal taste. In terms of getting results? Almost certainly not. If anything, the challenge for a defensive-minded team is to pick up enough wins to get through the qualification group, especially against opponents looking to play roughly the same type of football. A side based around ‘keeping things tight’ is more suited to a major tournament – certainly the knockout stages, and Ireland have shown in the past that it’s possible to draw your way out of a group.
In modern times, it’s difficult to remember an outsider cause a surprise at a major tournament by playing anything like open, attractive football. South Korea in 2002 were fairly defensive, Senegal[/url] were occasionally exciting but inherently counter-attacking, and [url=“http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/03/29/greece-euro-2004-tactics/”]Greece in 2004[/url] were the ultimate examples of a defensive-minded side excelling through organisation and opportunism at set-pieces. 2006 and 2008 largely went to form, and 2010 saw surprise packages [url=“http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/06/11/uruguay-0-0-france-no-cohesion-in-attacking-zones-from-either-side/”]Uruguay[/url], [url=“http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/06/26/ghana-2-1-united-states-tactics/”]Ghana[/url] and [url=“http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/06/15/italy-1-1-paraguay-tactics/”]Paraguay all based around organisation rather than creativity.
Look at this year’s Copa America, where the first knockout round saw the four reactive sides (Venezuela, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay) progress past the four sides who wanted to play good football (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia). For various reasons, proactive football isn’t particularly successful at international level – the fact that Spain are the World Champions shouldn’t dominate the debate too much; overall trends are more important than one-offs, whilst Spain have the unique advantage of being able to field the majority of a settled, highly successful club side.
So not only does Trapattoni possess little quality to attempt to outwit opponents in an open game of football, he’d also be going down a route which has few, if any, notable recent success stories.
That’s not to say Ireland can’t offer more going forward. Small aspects can and should be worked on – Andrews broke forward more away in Estonia, and if Ireland are to make more of an attacking impact, transitions from defence to attack must be quicker. The overall structure and approach, however, should change as little as possible to maximise the chance of a shock.
I can’t fucking format stuff since Rocko fucked around with the set up a while back. For fuck sake.
That’s an excellent article Bandage. Any idea who wrote it or do ZM usually attribute articles to their authors?
I’d hazard a guess at Michael Cox myself
I don’t think that’s a great piece. Interesting to hear his take on Ireland at this stage but I think he’s missing a few key points:
- there’s no mention of the importance of the wingers in the system - we wouldn’t be playing the way we are without the talent available on the wings which allows us to be more limited centrally
- partly as a result of that we’ve scored an awful lot of goals from crosses - way over 50% in Trap’s reign
- without wanting to kick off a debate on just how good Keane is, it’s not really accurate to say Ireland don’t have a “top-class footballer”. You could obviously debate top-class endlessly but at international level he’s tremendous and that’s another key reason we can afford to be a bit more cautious when we can rely on his goals. You can’t just ignore his goalscoring phenomenon entirely in an article about our setup.
I completely agree with not changing for the tournament though. I see a few commentators (Sadlier, Dunphy etc) have already turned their attention to that now and how we need to experiment now that we can and devise a new system.
I think it’s an alright piece. One thing it does mention is that 4-4-2 / 4-4-1-1 is the best system for Robbie Keane. Frankly, he has to be in the team for his goals but he’s not powerful or mobile enough to play as a lone front man. Who’s the next highest goalscorer in the squad after him? Probably Doyle with 10 goals - only 2 in this campaign (home and away to Andorra). Robbie Keane’s record and experience mean he’s always going to be in the team.
The trouble arises when we come up against teams playing with 3 in midfield and with lots of interchanging and movement. As Totti said elsewhere, that’s why I’d like to avoid Spain, Germany and maybe Holland. We saw Russia outplay us with a more fluid formation over two games and we didn’t really have an answer to it.
Trap has compared Robbie to the similarly legendary Francesco Totti in the past. I wonder if Robbie could formally play a more deeper role in a planned manner rather than, say like in Moscow, where the way the game panned out demanded that he fall back and look to pick up scraps of possession.
But it’s something that needs to be looked at. Whatever we do, I wouldn’t entertain playing a 4-5-1 / 4-3-3 with Robbie on the bench and Doyle or Walters leading the line and Fahey or one of the wide players playing infield alongside Whelan and Andrews. I think Stephen Hunt’s touch last night should also put to bed any argument that he could play infield. Imagine him trying to control the ball in a midfield with confined space.
All that said, I don’t actually think Trap will deviate too much away from what we’ve been doing. Again though, I really think a fully fit David Meyler with his mobility, enthusiasm, tackling and drive would actually be a big addition and would actually neatly fit into our system as one of the central midfield two. Much as I said a while back that I thought Walters’ game was ideally suited to what Trap wants given we look to hit the front man with direct passes, I think Meyler is a perfect fit for the Irish midfield player under Trap.
Bad news perhaps for Coleman/Lawrence that Fahey came on at wing again last night. I’d say he is fairly certain to go as a winger/central midfielder. Probably the fourth choice winger and third choice central midfielder. I remain to be convinced that he is good enough for starting role in either position at moment though to be honest. Quite a bit away from Duff/McGeady actually.
There’ll surely be plenty of Ireland & Euro 2012 chat coming up now on Off The Ball.