Ireland v Luxembourg - the Piles Derby

We are out now so Kenny has to bite the bullet and drop players who have nothing to offer going forward. Clark, Stevens, McClean, Long, Collins should never be in a squad again. Hendrick, Brady and Doherty very close to been bombed out. If Kenny wants to play good football he needs a number 10 so why not give Jack Byrne a chance.

No. How does it link to shamrock rovers?

Ireland should take a leaf out of Luxembourg’s book and establish a national academy and forge links with foreign clubs in the likes of Scotland, Wales and England and maybe northern France to take in those kids when they are 18.

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We reached a quarter-final at the U17 Euros in 2018 and a semi-final in the 2019 U19 Euros despite missing a raft of players so it’s not all doom and gloom.

Stephen Kenny can’t even be compared in the same breath as Brian Kerr. Kerr had won an U18 European championships with Ireland which must have been a phenomenal achievement.

He had outstanding group of players.

JP McManus is like most Eire footix when it comes to soccer. It’s all about your British club allegiance. The trophy wife there was owning Man U just like owning Glasgow Celtic was for his big buddy Dermot Desmond.

You can forget about Limerick doing it as a collective… Dinosaurs administrate the underage leagues. Pike and Annacotty have put huge time and money into it off their own backs but they they might get an invitation to play in a tournament out of season and the dinosaurs will block it. There’s good numbers playing soccer in Limerick but no joined up thinking… A joke that we’ve not produced any players of note in recent history… Too clannish and parochial.

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I don’t know, but he may well have paid some. It would be rude to ask him. His lad is now flourishing, and has an Irish grandad, so I’m in his ear already. :grimacing::grimacing:
That makes me a total hypocrite. A trait I despise.
Oh well.
It’s because he won’t listen to me anyway.

Has Limerick ever produced a top class player? For a soccer mad city it is a brutal record.

We also unfortunately need to get the begging bowl out. Liam Delap needs to be begged to play for us. I would offer him a starting place straight away. Surely he’s father can sway him. Collins, Long etc need to go.

Steve Finnan.

Limerick didn’t produce him tho…

No… everyone is out to get everyone else in Limerick. We can’t work together. The bogger league has a better record of producing players. Lot of Limerick city ballers want to be a big fish in a little pond.

It’s footballers we need

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Tommy Gaynor

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Going back to late 80s there … I used to pal with his nephew when he was at Forrest…did ok in spells but never got a proper run.

There seems to be a narrative emerging to absolve Kenny of some blame by saying that a number of players are struggling for game time and/or form at club level.

But this has always been the case with the Irish squad and our last half a dozen managers have had to contend with it as well. Jason Mcateer was playing for the Blackburn reserves when he scored the winner v Holland, Trap was getting solid performances out of the likes of St Ledger and Darren O’Dea when they were struggling for game time at club level and there are many more examples of this. It is a prerequisite of being Ireland manager and something out other managers had varying degrees of success in and were able to overcome this by giving the player a defined role and confidence in the Irish team, I don’t think this is a skillset that Kenny has in his locker.

The fact that Irish players play primarily in England is an issue; I’m not sure how you solve it really. But it does mean that we don’t produce the technical passing footballers that some of the continental teams have. And in recent years, we haven’t been producing the tricky wingers/forwards that we had at times in the past or even goalscorers.

We can pick 11 players who can pass the ball but lack real penetration in the final third. I like Browne, I think he can play, he had a very poor game yesterday. I thought Knight & Cullen did alright but as a midfield 3, they’re all lot dissimilar and there’s no one who can actually pick a killer pass.

Robinson was the one real threat in the final third; I think Collins offers something in a certain role but it was a bit weird to have him running the channels. He’s a target man, he’s good in the air, he’s got a few goals this season, he can hold the ball up. But he’s not going to run at defenders really, and he’s probably the type of forward you’d want to be hitting with crosses which we only did once or twice.

Now there aren’t a whole pile of options but we were probably a couple of players off what is needed to play the style Kenny wanted.

The other question that has to be asked is what is the goal? Was it to qualify for the World Cup? Or was it to build a team/style to make us competitive for Euro 2024 qualifying? Either way, losing to Luxembourg is a disaster, confidence takes a battering as a result.

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As I understand it, pj bought United for other reasons, largely to do with gock of ribralter.