OTB (Off The Ball)

Eh, the big front man is back

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You’ll upset the footixes with that talk who think pressing the opposition originated 5 years ago

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Answer the question please

Ian Rush was always Liverpool’s best defender.

Any truth to Ger Gilroy’s scéal about an Irish Indo journalist costing us Jack Grealish? Story goes that Martin O’ Neill was naming him in the senior squad in May 2015 and Grealish was on board only for a journalist to get wind of it, print it as a coup in the Indo and inadvertently alert England to the situation. They turn Grealish’s head and the rest is history. I think it’s a bit of a simplistic take and he may have pulled out of the squad anyway if England got in contact. One for the TNH thread I reckon. As if England wouldn’t have been keeping tabs on him by 2015.

Was thinking the other day imagine the team we’d have with Rice, Grealish, Ferguson, Conor Bradley, Delap, Michael Keane, probably a few others that got away recently too.

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Eire were masters of the “gegenpress” cc @footix in Big Jacks time

Not like Ger to exaggerate things

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Harry Kane was being mooted for a short while in late 2013 before he properly broke through at Spurs. I’d doubt he’d have accepted the offer though. James Maddison could’ve been another but again a fella who’s England born and bred so you couldn’t begrudge him turning down our advances. Patrick Bamford was probably the most realistic option really.

Liverpool under Klopp played a very direct brand of football for a good few years often bypassing midfield and crossing the ball from very deep. They won a European Cup with it. The two times Athletico won La Liga under Simeone, they played very direct to Suarez (2nd Time) who also did well with Uruguay playing like that alongside Cavani and Forlan. It is actually coming back in, Arsenal hit it early to Havertz plenty. One of the French teams that won the League, Montpellier, I think the year Giroud was there won the French league the same way I think I read.

I often wonder, the very best teams, with the best players could play any way. Madrid sat in and fought like dogs to get over City last year as they knew City were better than them with the ball.

Absolute horseshit.

Money being one of the reasons. The FAI covering themselves in glory as usual.

One of them, I think Rice was on the bench against the Danes in the Playoff iirc but I think MO’N had an agreement with the father not to use him and that he was there for experience. Grealish’s father was the same, they wanted to keep their options open. Looking back, it was never happening, probably a better chance of Kane if his career had stalled, the two lads were rated too highly.

Bellingham.

I can’t believe he didn’t play for us.

Anyway England will soon have so many players they won’t know what to do with them and we’ll once again have a team of Englishmen with an English manager (well, probably not, maybe Scottish or Welsh) and a non-English attitude and we’ll qualify for the quarter-finals of the World Cup without winning a game while England lose to Sweden in the round of 32.

It’s all here

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Just reading it now, lays it all out indeed. I don’t begrudge them, two brilliant players.

Daniel Taylor doesn’t tend to be far off. England held all the cards. But Delaney made a solid fuck out of us really.

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The two of them would have completely altered the course. The magnitude of star Grealish would’ve been here.

Look it, Jack is English, but he did love playing for Ireland too and saw himself as Irish. That’s the nature of the modern identity. I’d say had we managed to swing it, he would have loved being the main man in the Irish side. It was a catastrophic fuck up by all concerned but at the same time, we simply weren’t sexy.

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They’d never last on TFK