Mcclean is done anyway. An interesting player is Daniel Crowley at Birmingham City. Really classy player, probably not suited to the hustle and bustle of the championship but might be suited to international football.
Not eligible
He canāt even play for us so hardly that interesting.
How many of last nights team are starting regularly for their clubs?
Offhand 7 or 8. Hourihane, McClean, Randolph the three that arenāt
McClean was great for his hour last night, one of his best games in a long time for us.
Crowley has never pushed on as anticipated and as things stand isnāt even eligible
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I would go as far as to say we play āgreat footballā
Like I said, it was encouraging. I saw very little long ball last night. Thatās a plus in my eyes.
Spock still has a way to go. We were stone useless against Finland.
McClean was good as usual.
Heās consistently been one of Irelandās best players since he came into the team.
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The world cup qualifying is infinitely harder so they should build for the Euros but modern Irish sports fans and administrators are always in win-now mode and wouldnāt have the patience to allow Kenny to build a team that Mick was afforded from 96-00
Is it true Mick didnāt win in his first 7 games?
There was another 10 or 15 minutes in McClean. Seemed to make a chage for the sake of it.
Long should have been on sooner too in ET truth be told.
@Big_Dan_Campbell, realistically with only 13 teams qualifying for the WC from UEFA and given we were a bit off making a 24 team Euros, it might be wise to start blooding the young lads now but then when results arenāt going great, will the FAI stick with Kenny?
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Mick got those teams into play offs though and got some big wins and only for a late collapse against Macedonia would have qualified automatically. If Kenny does something similar he will be lauded for it.
Shane Long is done and was never that good in the first place, time to move on
He probably is but in Extra Time against tired defenders he was worth another 10 minutes in my opinion
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Heās the top scorer in the squad.
Heās an infuriating player but he is a pest and better than most of the other options we have.
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I think that is it . Shane was never a top international standard striker but he was well worth a place on Irish squad .
Are you including friendlies? He won his first couple of competitive games. He was relatively fortunate that we got a soft group for the 1998 WC qualifiers especially compared to the Euro 2000 and 2002 qualifying groups
He has scored one goal in a competitive game which he started for Ireland. He used to be a good bench option but offered nothing at all off the bench in his limited time under Kenny. You need a first touch as a striker at international level
It seemed a panic move by SK to me, presumably because the thought the Slovaks would target McClean when on the yellow card, he was whipped swiftly after that
I think Long is worth a place in the squad as it is now as we donāt have four better centre forward options than him currently. I would be surprised if he is still an option come the end of next year though.