O neill was an outstanding manager of his type, and of his time. My honest opinion is that his time has now gone, certainly with Ireland. I realise itās Denis o briens tab, but a million a year, when he doesnāt even coach is an awful lot of money. Also, to be honest, I think I always feared that a result like that was coming. O neills Ireland currently always looked like getting taken apart against a decent side, especially if they got drawn out. Klopps Liverpool side look similar, and Iād agree with Nembo that his results arenāt substantially better than those before him, but Klopp has restored a wow factor. Liverpool are better to watch (well according to pal of mine who is both extremely bright, and has been a season ticket holder pretty much since he could walk), hence Klopp gets more leeway. Ireland under o neill have been getting worse to watch year on year. Added to this, the players now look worse than they do playing for their clubs. Those players are all extremely good at soccer, or they wouldnāt be professional. They are all well able to look up and pick a pass. O neill had them playing with fear against Denmark over both legs, and Ireland should not ever do that against anyone. Having Keane glowering away in the background is making g things worse I suspect. I know a few manyoo staff all levels, who say pretty much invariably that he is an unpredictable oddball.
Itās a lot of money. But thatās largely irrelevant as you say. Itās being funded privately and that funding is linked to the manager having that sort of profile.
Agreed that we always look like being taken apart against a good side if we get drawn out but thatās been the case for at least a decade now and it doesnāt really look like changing anytime soon.
Thatās not to say we shouldnāt aspire to be better or to get more possession so weāre more in control of our destiny. But thatās way easier said than done. Every team has professional players and most teams ranked higher than us (and quite a few ranked lower) have more professional players playing at higher levels than ours.
The EPL is not some holy grail that lifts good players into great players and brings everyone to the same standard. Having 3 guys playing at Burnley is not a guarantee of success. Itās a sad indictment of our current playing pool that our best players are at that level of relative mediocrity unfortunately.
Would you stick with MON?
What does Roy Keane being to the āticketā ?
Heās an assistant manager mate, itās not a foreign concept, he performs similar roles to others in his position
Sweep sweep .
Iād sack em all mate, but I wouldnāt place a disproportionate amount of the blame at the door of the assistant manager,
Has anyone thought that maybe just maybe, itās a bunch of players that just aināt good enough regardless of what management team is in place?
The players MON had available to him in his time at Celtic were the best in my lifetime capped off by a gutting Uefa cup loss to a then relatively unknown Portugese upstart.
We played some decent football at the Euroās for spells against Sweden, v Italy and for 50 odd minutes against France where we were full of energy, hard working and most importantly we looked to have a bit of courage on the ball and looked to use it. The likes of Brady and Hendrick were central to this while Murphy played very well as a lone striker and bringing others into the game.
This campaign should have been set up to try and maximize the contribution of the likes of Brady and Hendrick instead it marginalised their impact due to OāNeill not having a coherent plan as to how to use them and this is entirely down to OāNeill, both are consistent performers at club level with Brady playing wide and Hendrick the most advanced of a midfield three for Burnley yet for Ireland they are asked to play a different role or position from one game to the next and in some games like Georgia away and Denmark last week numerous different role over 90 minutes and this is only compounded by OāNeillās stubbornness in only naming the team to the players 90 minutes or so before kick off, the chopping and changing has massively effected their performances.
Another stick he should be beaten with was the inclusion of Glenn Whelan over the likes of Meyler and to a lesser extent Arter and Long over Murphy for long spells of the campaign. Early goals away to Serbia and Georgia somewhat painted over the cracks of performances whereby we were completely played off the field and bless to pick up two points from these games. The first half of the Georgia game was as abject an Irish performance i can remember where we ended up with 20% possession after 45 minutes.
The win away in Austria set us up in an excellent position to control our own destiny and win the group but we ended up giving three mediocre performances at home to Wales, Austria and Serbia and performances certainly dropped off after a promising start. I doubt OāNeill can turn this around and a lot of the deficiencies laid bare by Denmark will have damaged morale and you get the feeling that now is the time to change things and bring in a fresh voice, but I get the feeling that OāNeill is too stubborn to walk away and with a lack of credible available alternatives the FAI will look to keep him on as well.
Relative to what? The Swedish and Iceland squads is full of players playing at a similar if not lower standard to ours. Take the top 10 teams our of Europe and there isnāt a whole lot between the next 20 teams. Whether we can get better results can be debated but we most certainly could be more organised and play better football than we did under OāNeill in 2017
I donāt feel hugely strongly either way. On balance Iād probably stick with him over the unknown possibility of who in their right mind would want the job. International football is not a very appealing propositon for many coaches and the Ireland job is not attractive at all really.
The Icelandic league has 5 divisions with a population of just over 330k we can barely get 2 leagues in place with over 5 million that is some stat.Thanks to @chops91 for informing me of this.
Bullshit
Easy tiger.
Iceland coach the coaches across the board. They invest in the regular dad with the u10ās. That has a huge knock on effect. Their aim is not about developing Elite players. Its about developing everyone and letting the elite emerge.
It makes complete sense. Sweden are doing it now as well.
Ireland/FAI is run by idiots and is highly political. Jobs donāt go to the right people very often.
Calls for Brian Kerr to come back would tell you where the mindset is in soccer in Ireland.
Randolph : decent but still a championship keeper
Ward : Premiership player but average at best.
Clark : Premiership player alarmingly. Not a good player
Duffy : decent player, can improve
Christie : Championship player who did well since Coleman injury
Meyler : Championship player, decent but even MoN has taken an age to fall for him.
Arter : Premiership player but again has a lot to prove for Ireland
Hendrick : Premiership player whoās form for Ireland has nose dived since Euros
Brady : Premiership player, obviously talented but very poor Qualifier series
McClean : Premiership player who consistently performs for Ireland
Murphy : Championship player, tries hard but getting on & hard to see him leading the line for Ireland into the next campaign.
Management did pretty well with that bunch imo.
Look at the structures Belgium put in place over 15 years ago too and now they have a golden generation of players.It could be a long time until we get another Roy or Robbie Keane again.
Funnily enough, I think in education, we should be teaching the teachers. Not enough focus on this. Its about those who have achieved success, sharing knowledge, ideas and resources. Can be applied in lots of areas. Problem is, those that are good are often unwilling to do this.
Throw up the Northern Ireland team that played Switzerland last Sunday and the Sweden team that played Italy and do a comparison. The players are of a similar standard to what other teams around our level are picking from and we have more depth in our squad compared to the likes of Northern Ireland and Iceland.
Results under the management are not the real issue here, performances are and they have been too few and far between and while you can argue that our ceiling in terms of performances may not be that high we can certainly play a lot better than we did in all our competitive games in 2017. We did well to make the playoffs as fourth seeds but with numerous underwhelming performances and an inability to get the best out of the players it looks as though OāNeillās time in charge has ran its course