jesus i dunno, i was happy to see the back of him tbh in October
Portugal need to win tonight fella
I hope Dias plays.
I think he’s there to be got at.
It’s due to be rainy and windy.
ROI 2-1 POR
give Pepe a free ride you would? And Aaron Connolly had him on toast the last day only he couldn’t finish
id say he will - it’s him and pepe right?
yeah - cancelo and guerreiro too - real attacking full backs who left pepe completely isolated. I reckon they’ll sit in a bit more tonight and completely dominate possession for 20 minutes or so, they’ll score early, it’ll be a long night
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He was definitely our best player for a long stretch at the start of Spock’s reign. I can’t fully remember the details of the last few games he played though
Will Portugal take as cavalier/naive at the back as last time? They gave us acres of space to break into.
I couldn’t believe it watching it that they left Pepe so isolated, Connolly had 40 yards of grass to run into and wouldn’t push it beyond him, he kept trying tight take ons… I was fucking fuming.
They won’t tonight, they’ll sit in early away from home, they really underestimated Ireland the last day, all talking about getting Ronaldo his record and stuff. They’ll be on it. We won’t see the ball
Yeah we will be camped on the edge of our box for long periods. I wouldn’t be all that bothered on the result but it would be nice to see us have some spells of dominance and force chances/put them on the back foot for 5 or 10 minute spells here and there.
Serbia in spite of the fluky goal and decent result was a fairly disheartening performance I thought, we never really laid a glove on them and they dominated throughout.
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They don’t.
If Ireland win tonight then won’t a draw do Serbia in last game ???
yes, Portugal need a win tonight
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i think Serbia at home was really represenative of the challenge that we have in front of us with the current squad who tbh and lets call it now are probably vastly overachieving by getting so close to a result v Portugal the last time and getting a point off a fairly established unit now like the Serbs.
The performances since andorra really have been a credit to the team and kenny especially, this is very much a “sum of the parts” type of system and players are actually playing above themselves collectively to get to this level which is WAY above where they are on a day to day basis with st.mirren, wigan ,etc… its grand for Azerbaijan and that was great performance and turnarond from a bad home result but Serbia and Portugal are a totally different level of competition
We need to be cognisant of that- v serbia and i think i covered it before with Bandage we were shredded in midfield - we left way too many open spaces, the 3 boys gave no protection to our back 3 as they kind of allowed the Serbs walk thru them and at times they didnt know where to look as the movement of the attacking players was superb but its what you expect at this level.
is that disappointing? probably not as our lads have simply in their careers never come up against that kind of thing but here is key… keep that midfield trio together and get them to learn from that that- this is part of building a team and this is kenny’s job, internalise that serbian game, learn from it and try to move forward
this is all about stability, improvement and progression
Regardless a last game shoot out with Serbia will carry huge risk for them . Granted Serbia are flaky but they will have a puncher’s chance
they’ll have a punchers chance regardless. if portugal win they’ll only be 2 points clear of Serbia. I don’t know where the idea came from that Portugal had a free ride tonight
we havent seem the historic Serb flakiness so far tho in this campaign to date
Prosenecki seems to be getting a tune out of them,
The Chippy v Steven Kelly argument after the Serbia game was a microcosm of the debate on where we are at