McCathy was alright last night, not his best game but he wasnât bad. It should also be tempered with the fact he hasnât trained much lately and is lacking match sharpness. Heâs an easy target for the critics who made their mind up about him a while ago.
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I dont buy in to the general attitude towards him⌠I just think he is capable of a lot more but goes hiding a lot⌠Blue is right, weâve a very limited group of players and any points are worth celebrating.
For some mental reason we go to fuckin pieces when we go a goal up
Brendan Dunne should be brought over as a mentor to the squad
We are like a horse that needs to be produced late.
We need to try not to take the lead until at least the 80th minute.
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Not sure what a failed Limerick Hotelier can do to help, but Iâm willing to listen to your ideas.
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Agreed. Decent performance and the pleasing part was we a actually played decent football at times and created a few good chances. Problem is we are very limited and holding onto the ball is very difficult. Thatâs why we struggle to close out games.
Must be said Sweden were also very limited
Think we should have went with a rigid 4-5-1 when we went one up and left long up top alone to trouble them on the break. Coleman was left to exposed.
We went with our lopsided diamond yesterday with Walters higher on the right ahead of the four, Hendrick covering the left and playing more advanced than McCarthy on the right and Whelan at the base:
While McClean has played the Walters role in some friendlies of late and slotted in on the right, he played wide left last night when he came on for Walters. That meant our narrow diamond had to tilt over the other way a bit and there was nobody directly facing the left full Olsson as Walters was.
I felt McCarthyâs fitness / lack of training caught up with him. He was struggling to get over to close Olsson down and he was able to advance into our half too easily too often. Coleman was already occupied by the wide midfield chap Forsberg so he couldnât just rush out of the defensive line to stop Olsson further upfield.
OâNeill seemed to recognise this by switching Hendrick to the right hand side of the diamond before McCarthy went off and I guess playing McGeady wide right when he came on was also an attempt to turn the tables on Olsson. That space down their left was their avenue back into the game, I felt.
I thought we played very well up until we scored and had 4 or 5 really good chances/efforts aside from the goal. Itâs strange how we so often retreat when we score first in these games - we didnât react well to taking the lead again and I couldnât really argue with the result even though it seemed they didnât have many shots.
The fitness levels of some of our players (McCarthy and Walters in particular) and the lack of squad depth has me a little bit concerned ahead of the next games.
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Agree completely.
Mon tried to fix things but McCarthy looked bet,
Wes Hoolahan lights up a stage; Long lacking his presence
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good piece.
funny seeing Fran who wouldnât spit on a league of Ireland player creaming himself when Coleman crossed to âWesoâ
real funny
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I was on a train from Hamburg to Dusseldorf at that very moment and had lost phone signal so I didnât realise that we had scored until I recovered signal and my RTE radio 1 connection about 5 minutes later.
Youâre a worse liar than Horsebox at this stage
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Is Wes Hoolihanâs performance yesterday being slightly over blown. Seems to be getting a huge amount of credit and RTE are comparing it to Modricâs performance over the weekend.
I thought he was very good for 15 minutes before and after half time and we certainly missed him when he went off but for me Robbie Brady was the best player on the pitch and was a contrast threat and really drove us on along with being very solid defensively. Hendrick was the dominant midfielder on the pitch for 60 odd minutes til he tired too
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Wes controlled a ball that came down from a height on the left touch line shortly before he went off yesterday, then his next touch was perfect to beat his man, very few Irish players ever could have done it. He used the ball well, scored a top class goal, he wasnât our best player last night though
The chap that scored the Irish goal yesterday connected with his shin. Much like Whelan in 88 and Houghton in 94. Weâre shit at football.
Contrast with the beautiful strike of the Italian chappy for their second.
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Iâm confident that youâll spell his surname correctly at some stage in the very near future, pal.
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Iâm not
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Itâs an epidemic