Awful grudge against the man. Presumed you know him.
I have no grudge against him and wish him all the best in the job and hope he makes a success of it. On all available evidence so far this has not been the case so far and I am calling it as I see it. Passive possession football with no real attacking intent or defensive organisation and strange media utterances and bizarre organisation off the field is all we have seen so far.
That was bizarre stuff tbh .
I think we’re the ones who could be in trouble if we lose in Belgrade. Under MON you would give us an outside chance of sneaking a flukey 1-1 draw against Portugal (akin to the results against Germany 2014/15) but we’ll try to play a bit under Kenny and inevitably lose 3-0. That basically means if we lose away to Serbia then we have to beat in Dublin or we’re pretty much resigned to finishing 3rd.
What time is the captains run at today?
Burkey is on standby 
Emmet Malone in the paper of record suggesting a 3-4-3.
I’d be very surprised if starting team is that formation
A review of the clubs the Serbian lads play for isn’t exactly intimidating . That said it is better than us .
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Possession football is what we all want. The pool of players available to us just don’t have a tried and tested goalscorer, not Bossman Steo’s fault. We don’t concede many goals so I don’t get your last point.
Why do you want possession football? What does it matter if we have 35% possession or 70% possession if we have no attacking intent with it? Possession football does not necessarily equate to attractive or winning football. I’d like to see Ireland be better than the sum of their parts and play with a spirit and tempo which teams struggle to live with and whether we can create chances and score a goal with 2 passes back to front or with 30 passes and win games, whether we have 20% or 70% possession should make little odds as long as we are are organised and are getting consistent performances.
We were routinely opened up my fairly mediocre teams in the nations league and were utterly blessed that England only scored three goals against us when they could have had 6 or 7.
Hopefully the insipid performances of the nations league are left behind and there are green shoots tonight and we give a bold performance. But there has to be pragmatism to how the team plays if we want to get results rather than trying to play an aspirational style of football with a group of players it doesn’t suit.
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People are fair deluded about watching Ireland looking for entertainment. If you want entertainment watch PSG or City in the Champions League.
There’s something very raw and special about watching Ireland.
I love going to the Aviva and going nuts when we get a throw in or something in the opposition half.
The roar that goes up when there’s free kick or corner is something else with 40 odd thousand roaring at Duffy to ‘get up the pitch’.
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Some seem to think it is so simple and akin to playing FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer on their PS5s
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Its mad.
I’m lucky I have three other like-minded friends who go to all the games together and understand what we are.
We’d be so engrossed in it all and give it socks when Whelo used to break up an attack or McClean would thunder through the back of someone.
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Ffs the media have been 110% behind Stephen Kenny to date .
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I would think there are very few people who wouldn’t like Spock to succeed, it would be a great shot in the arm for domestic soccer if he was to make a qualified success of the gig and he does deserve time to try and blood the younger players and build the team as he sees fit, but there is no doubt he has gotten an unbelievably easy ride from the irish soccer journalists so far given some of the carry on behind the scenes and performances on the pitch.
I want possession based football because it means their team only get to run at Shane Duffy 40% of the time rather than 60%. I want possession based football because our attacking midfielders and strikers are nowhere near good enough to score from fast, accurate counter attacks. I want possession based football so that we can have more players closer to the opposition goal to feed off knockdowns, half chances and pure flukes.
I also think it’s more enjoyable to play and will ultimately lead to more buy in from players.
I think Kenny is getting off lightly. We have been as bad as I can ever remember under his tenure
He’s had as bad a set of players as I can remember
But surely if you don’t want Shane Duffy ran at then the simple solution is not to play a high line and play to his strengths which is defending in his own penalty box.
I would argue that the likes of Connolly, Robinson, Obafemi, Long, McClean, Hendrick etc are far more suited to a counter attacking, high tempo, hard running game than a possession based football.
I think if we had one midfielder of sufficient quality who could get on the ball 70+ times a game and play the occasional incisive pass and take the ball under pressure we would be a lot better but we haven’t had a player like that in over a decade. They don’t even have to be world class, lads like Granit Xhaka and Steven Davis routinely lord it at international level doing exactly that type of role
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