Jim McGuinness
Fine with that.
Hughton is used to managing journeymen.
Jack Charlton.
Our squad is ‘hardly dreadful’ 90 odd% of international sides wouldn’t have much better. Half the battle for the next manager is making them believe their that little bit extra special. Next manager will be O Neill, not some old fuck at the end of his career, distiungished as it was we just tried that and he was fairly pathetic
Well it’s about aligning our ambitions with reality then Laz. You reckon we’re in the top 10% based on talent but then you think our record under Trap was pathetic. What do you expect we do with this team?
If you look in a European context, where we play all our games, we’re 3rd or 4th seeds and rightly so. So we’re in about the top 50%. We have achieved slightly above that, playing horrible football, and people aren’t happy because they expect us to be better than Sweden and Austria, both of whom have genuine superstars to accompany their mediocrity.
O’Neill would certainly get the best out of the the limited players available to him but that would just be papering over the cracks. The new manager should be some sort of renegade total football enthusiast and it’s best to write off the next ten years because the current batch of youngsters coming through are every bit as limited.
I think Scotland were at a similar malaise to us about 5/6 years ago and are currently bringing in some really good footballers who will establish themselves in the coming years. Ireland need to do something quite similar.
On an unrelated note but about the game last year. They really should cap the amount of kids going to these games. In our row we had a group of about 6 kids under 10 who did nothing but run in and out of the row of seats through the game, they had no interest in watching the football. I have no problem with kids going along with their old man or big brother or the likes but having bunches of these little shits acting the maggot when you’re trying to watch a masterclass from Ibra in such a high stakes game is a disgrace.
[quote=“Rocko, post: 827402, member: 1”]What do you expect we do with this team?
[/quote]
Playing our best players wouldn’t be a bad start
Brian McDermott or Big Mick
Martin O’Neill or Mick McCarthy for me
Btw, wtf was he doing brnging on Cox? Thru injury, the lad had barely kicked a ball in anger since last April!
Shocking stuff from the management to be honest
There weren’t many who could have been disappointed last night. I’d have brought Brady on instead of Cox but that’s about it.
Anyway I meant, what do you think we should be achieving with this group of players? Do you think we’re better than Sweden, Austria etc. I think it’s an inevitable end for Trap now but if you think he’s been unsuccessful then I think you’re setting the bar too high. We are very average.
[quote=“Lazarus, post: 827409, member: 286”]Btw, wtf was he doing brnging on Cox? Thru injury, the lad had barely kicked a ball in anger since last April!
Shocking stuff from the management to be honest[/quote]
Mind blowing… Cox shouldn’t even be in the squad.
The delusion of some people is still as strong as ever.
Last night I saw kids going round wearing Liverpool, Man Utd and other English football team kits. I also saw others in rugby and GAA attire. This is plain wrong for a start. The only acceptable clothing last night were - Irish football regalia, Celtic Football Club regalia and League of Ireland football club regalia. Irish football is terminally ill because people would rather have some bizarre love-in with an English football team.
There are a few ways to try and improve this although many of them may seem excessive and unlikely to work. One would be to ban Irish youngsters from signing (including pre-contract) for clubs outside Ireland until they turn 18 and try and negotiate some sort of system whereby clubs will get properly looked after when they do sell them. I don’t know if this would work in practice (or in legislation) but it would strengthen the domestic club game and make sure the youngsters would stay here.
I think another would be making an effort to market League of Ireland clubs a lot more, I’m not sure of the current situation with this but I think League of Ireland clubs should be linking up with local schools and trying to gain a following between the kids.
I think Ireland should also stop calling English rejects up as well, I don’t think a lot of their hearts are in it and Ireland are a second option for them. Players like McCarthy, McGeady, Wilson, Gibson, Duffy, McClean etc (who had options to play for another country or occupied territory) are fine as Ireland was their first priority to play for and they went through a lot of adversity for making that decision. If lads who were eligible to play for Ireland at youth level and didn’t take the option up then they should be discarded forever more.
While these steps would probably help the situation. I don’t think you can solve it, most Oirish people are brainwashed West Brits and they can’t shake the shackle with their subservient manner to the Queen. The crux lies with the domestic game and I’m not sure that there is much the FAI can do when the Irish people show zero loyalty to it.
[quote=“Rocko, post: 827410, member: 1”]There weren’t many who could have been disappointed last night. I’d have brought Brady on instead of Cox but that’s about it.
Anyway I meant, what do you think we should be achieving with this group of players? Do you think we’re better than Sweden, Austria etc. I think it’s an inevitable end for Trap now but if you think he’s been unsuccessful then I think you’re setting the bar too high. We are very average.[/quote]
We are average, but the management’s system, or use of players for this system is a joke. His subs add to this. You can’t play a compact defensive style with an immobile fucktard like Whelan in the centre. That’s been apparent for two years now. But it’s the panic and cluelessness of the players when they get that ball that’s most alarming. They don’t have a clue what to do with it and at times look like they dont want the thing. That all stems from management. I’m not claiming we are world beaters, and the players equally let us down, but we are better than that.
The panic and cluelessness is down to the manager and two of the players who were most responsible for that last night were two that there was major media clamour for Trapattoni to bring into the sides (Long and McClean). You can’t teach composure - you either have it or not.
The ball doesn’t stick up forward either, we badly need to at least one striker that can hold it up if we are gonna continue on with more of the same.
I don’t think people understand the depth of the dilemma in Irish football. I think Trapattoni with the best way about the job that he could. Who can carry that lone striker role out? Long can run and jump but there is nothing else in his locker. Gibson was given ample opportunities but failed to impress before he took a strop. Whelan is definitely something Trapattoni does deserve criticism for - I’m not over exaggerating when I say he is one of the worst footballers I have ever seen, he reminds me a lot of Paul Hartley who we had at Celtic.
What players have genuine grievances with his management? Stokes, I don’t think he has that much, he damaged his chances by turning down the opportunity to play in the Nations Cup that time and Lennon hasn’t shown an awful lot of faith in him at Celtic. He has done a lot more than most of the attackers to deserve a place but that withdrawal probably had enough of an impact on the manager’s thinking.
Clark had to wait a while before he proved himself to be a donkey. It’s always the same, a lot of media clamour that the idiot fans buy into about trading shit for a different shade of shit. The media have been exposed as football ignorant fuckwits with the hype they blew up the likes of McCarthy, Long, Coleman, McClean and Clark. By and large their impact when Trap did introduce them to the squad was minimal to non-existent. Have we any central midfielder who is comfortable on the ball and will show responsibility? Have we any striker who can make the ball stick up front? Have we a wide man who can take players on and beat them? Have we a central defender who is not a carthorse?
We have a system that had tried to counteract the fact that the only halfway technical players we have are wingers (though McGeady was injured yeaterday) and one of our strikers. McCarthy is sometimes decent on the ball but he was atrocious last night and that wasn’t Trap’s doing.
We can’t really get away with Hoolahan and two strikers because we’d get destroyed further back. We can’t play Hoolahan off Keane because that doesn’t suit Keane and we can’t pass the ball out from the back anyway. We can’t drop Keane because Long can’t shoot.
Like Doyle?