Most of the balls to him arenāt even balls to him. They just end up being in his half of the pitch. The turn and HOOF approach is fairly embarrassing at this stage.
Christensen is being kept out of the team by a championship defender. I honestly donāt think the starting 11ās are that dissimilar in quality
Yeah, it is very agricultural with little purpose to it. The odd third man run or diagonal long ball wouldnt go astray
Bjelland is a very solid player who has had some rough luck with injuries in recent years. He is a player the Danes would have thought very highly of, u21 captain etc and he must be decent if heās keeping the likes of Vestergaard, Christensen and Jorgensen out of the side all of whom are playing at a higher level. He is left footed so perhaps its a balance thing the manager is opting for at the back.
The bottom line is the vast majority of the Danish squad have a vast array of top flight and top level European football - the vast majority of the Irish squad donāt.
Huh?
Rope a dope ladsā¦ With Myeler back we will have some one that can run box to box and offer more support to McLean and whoever is up topā¦ He will get on more ball than Hendrick also who has been poor this campaignā¦ Brady has been poor on the ball the last few matches also but I doubt he will be dropped.
Iād like to see Arter, McLean, Myeler, Wes and Brady with Slab up top.
I thought McCarthy - Hendrick - Brady would be our midfield for this campaign but injuries ruined that a bit. Still, the emergence of Meyler for McCarthy might have allowed us to return to that setup but we kept Brady wide until last night.
Itās hard to know whether Hendrick and Brady are suited to the system. They are excellent some days, others they look a little lost and OāNeill seems to favour playing Brady out wide.
I think the general point is fair. McClean seems to play well in the system and heās decent at getting up in support of Murphy but the rest of the midfield sometimes seem to struggle with their roles when we have the ball. But even last night you could see OāNeill going mad when we hoofed it once or twice. So itās not all playing to instruction.
Listened to second Captains post match podcast.
Miguel Delaney and Dion Fanning are very very irritating.
Miguel seems to find himself hilarious.
Thatās only because Champions League performer Jonny Hayes was cut from the provisional squad. We really have tremendous strength in depth and I think weāll see a couple of players who didnāt start last night come into the lineup on Tuesday night to drive us into the finals.
Very very good and realistic analysis by Kenny Cunningham on Newstalk now.
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Really? I think heās woeful usually. Maybe the worst of a poor lot.
Kenny Cunningham needs to be reintegrated into RTEās punditry first choice III immediately.
Himself and Packie Bonner do the late night highlights package .
Iām aware of that.
When he was on the main panel in the past you could see there was tension between himself and the elders , particularly Dunphy .
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Exactly. Think it was the 2014 World Cup where he showed complete and utter disdain for Dunphy and regularly just cut him off without making any eye contact and gave a lengthy riposte without taking a breath.
What did he say
Graham Barrett very good on RTĆ at the moment. Fairly dismissive of Darren Frehill and his silly notions.
āDo you want us to be expansive and find ourselves 2 or 3 down and out of the tie?ā
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We need to play 20 yards higher up the pitch on Tuesday night. Weāre not a team whose centre backs split, receive the ball from the keeper, pass it into the midfield and progress from one third into the next and ultimately into the box. Playing as deep as last night essentially meant that Murphy was too isolated. The defence and midfield were too detached from him. He thought one midfielder should have been instructed to help Murphy with the pressing so as not to allow their centre backs to play it around between them before launching those diagonal balls forward.
While last night was satisfactory from a purely defensive set up, weāre at our best when we retain that solidity but also add in more aggression and pressing. We score goals from pinching the ball off the opposition higher up the pitch and then committing men into the box. Pushing up as a unit and showing that intent makes this more likely and gives Murphy more support. Itās not necessarily a āWesā thing.
He thinks we can do this more often in every game and he reckons we can certainly do it against the Danes as they donāt have a real pacy threat in behind. He also believes we can force mistakes from their centre backs and midfielders and win the ball back in more advanced areas if we have a more aggressive and streamlined press.
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I donāt necessarily disagree with this but to be fair to Denmark they had dropped 3 back there so I think theyād have dealt with an extra body. Also Murphy doesnāt really have the legs to press aggressively. Heās happy enough to see them playing it long instead of actually pressuring them on those long balls.
Would have been better to push up further as the game went on like we did against Wales but Kvist was pretty much with his centre backs and it almost seemed like too far to press.
Also, in other games weāve had Hendrick more free because of Meyler behind but I think he was told to be more disciplined last night. Again we could have changed that a little as it went on but I was happy enough to see what they were doing with the ball.
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