The GAA.ie one is gas. A local reporter says some fella in Division 4 tore it up against a hungover cornerback in the league and me man is on team of the week.
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Was surprised Duffy came back in and started both games ahead of O’Shea (granted tough start at Burnley)
I thought it was Collins deep for first goal it was actually Duffy, but that was all on Doherty, what the fuck he was doing heading it back in field only he knows. the whole teams shape was all over the place then because Ireland haven’t a fucking clue what to do when they lose the ball
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Really? They’re getting plenty of practice at it
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Personality, status, who you are, how you speak, how you interview, this isn’t a 1% thing. It’s probably the most key thing of all.
You don’t get much time with players at international level. If the players think “who the fuck is this guy?”, “why is he speaking like Mr. Bean?” everything else is going to go badly. You could see confusion in the players last night. There was zero conviction in them. That’s because they don’t believe in their manager.
The elephant in the room with replacing Kenny is that there is more or less no such thing as a ‘good manager’ or at least there are so few of them that there’s no point in talking about it in relation to Ireland because we’re not going to get one.
An awful lot of people thought Kenny was one now the consensus is he’s not. The exact same thing happens with 99pc of managers they are great one week/month/season shite the next. You see it constantly at every level. The reality is there are too many intangibles and the only thing that makes someone good is results. It’s not like players where it is completely obvious who’s good and who’s not.
We can do our best to get someone but in reality it’s pure guess work really but I suppose it gives us something to chat about.
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Shut your mouth I’ll tell your mother on ya
i warned the forum about Spock & the players locking him out - they didnt listen & now look where we are
be mindful of this when you dismiss my posts about cow secretion
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A good manager doesn’t base his approach on getting nervous as kittens Championship players to pass the ball out from goal kicks and play triangles in their own box against Holland and France.
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I’m on board with your Manager summation and recommendations, not so much your Bovine summations, recommendations and secretions.
I still love and respect you and am willing to admit you were right should the end of the world come about as a result of cows (with or without guns).
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True, they’re probably as informed as yourself about football.
The football that “Miguel”, The Off The Ball on Newstalk generation & YBIG singing section members thought Kenny would bring & what Kenny sold in the early days hasn’t materialised. You still get a few lads making those weird claims that we’re now playing “good football” when we’re not but they’re just cult-like in their defence of Spock.
But @Cheasty ’s point about narrow international windows is well made. And it’s something @Big_Dan_Campbell has said a fair bit too - the most effective international teams in instances where the quality of player available is modest enough & training ground time is limited are those that are well-drilled in a clearly defined & usually basic enough game plan.
Kenny’s stuff is neither here nor there. He came in talking about progressive football, building up from the back & playing through the lines. But that type of football (more so for our standard of player) takes a lot of repetition & instruction. It takes a long time working on it before players are making the movements & decisions on & off the ball by instinct. It’s probably why Guardiola’s new signings often take months to bed into a team. For example, Postecoglou has recently been talking about the same thing. How he’s been satisfied with Spurs’ start but it’s been based on hours & hours of work on the training ground since 1 July & there’s still a huge amount of time to be invested before it becomes routine.
These are the wanky football phrases like rotations between the full back, the wide player & the central midfielder on that side. Inverted full backs & what triggers them to move into midfield, when do they go on the overlap/under lap, positioning of players & general team shape when we have the ball in this zone of the pitch or that zone, how we line up without the ball. Teams are now playing different formations without the ball than with it & so on. Can you imagine the amount of video analysis, training ground work & walk throughs a professional club team are doing to knit this all together? It’ll look fluid & instinctive when it works but it’ll take a lot of effort & quality coaching to get to that point.
Spock came in promising we would just click into playing out from the back & through the lines but, as I’ve said before, the structure & patterns necessary for a team to successfully do it have been completely absent. He hasn’t made any real inroads at all in implementing it & international football isn’t set up for it either, especially for a side like us. It’s fairly dumb & naive stuff.
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He keeps harping on about the number of debuts he has handed out, as if it’s a badge of honour.
MON gave an interview after we qualified for the Euros. Before the campaign started, he said to his defenders ‘if we only concede two or three goals from set pieces in this qualification. campaign, we’ll qualify.’ It’s fairly basic stuff but simplified it for the players. Did anyone really think we’d hold on after the early goal last night? Deep down the players didn’t really believe I’d say, the Dutch didn’t either.
As said above, these International windows are very short. You’ve maybe four or five sessions to drill them, maybe even less. Grand for the bigger nations with their superior standard of player, they can adjust to little preparation time, but for us it’s as basic as being a difficult, horrible team to play against. Don’t give cheap goals away from set pieces. Don’t leave yourself open to counters. Keep your shape. That’s achievable, irrespective of the standard of player at your disposal. Then you hope to create something at the other end through Ferguson or Ogbene or from a set piece.
Just so frustrating, there have been times when we’ve looked like it might be about to click but it has only ever been fleeting. On the whole we look so uncomfortable, asking moderate players to play this open, expansive style that’s alien to most of them.
He hasn’t enjoyed much luck in his reign but you make your own luck also.
Last three teams we played had Gus Poyet, Didier Deschamps and Ronald Koeman as managers. Played at the highest level. Our fella wouldn’t have been out of place in the Phoenix Park.
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Mario tardelli could be an option too
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Maybe Marco Andretti either?
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