Go if we can afford to pay him off and find a suitable replacement.
I can see this developing into something similar to the end of Mick MCarthyâs time in charge.
Trapp has been brilliant in bringing us to this point but does anyone think that he will, at 73 years of age, will fundamentally change his footballing philosophy, drop Glenn Whelan, Doyle and Keane and trust in the Gibson, McCarthy, McClean to bring us in a new direction where we try and play with the ball a bit.
Hopefully if he does stay on heâll prove me wrong.
more nonsense from croppy- its like paul dempsey saying why play ward when stephen kelly is on the bench- its all much of a muchness- its not like he is playing whealan ahead of xavi ffs. they are basically a bunch of journeymen footballers and the new gaurd coming through are all technically inadequate- we are shit but he can help us with his discipline.
also people seem to forget he built a team around platini & totti as well- if we had decent players he would use them
Nonsense would be persisting with the same failed methods without trying something new. Young players wonât improve their technical skills in your system unless you give them the opportunity to do so.
The very least they deserve is the opportunity to prove themselves.
He has to show a willingness to change things up. His decision making or lack of or his general stubborness not to change up a system or players have been his one downfall.
The long term future of our national game is at stake but I donât think that is going to concern him. He willl continue to use the older players in the sane capacity if he thinks he can get results, while the players that will ultimately have to come in when this lot retire.will have gone without international game time.
He has been good, but Iâd let him go and like I said previously, I would build a young team and sacrificing this campaign, with the aim of having a serious go at the euros in 4 years.
its all much of a muchness- if anything it was the senior players that let Ireland down not Andrews and Whelan- Given was woeful as was Dunne- once they gave away early goals the game was up
Keith Andrews played most games for West Brom after he joined them last January, more games that Darren Gibson for everton while Glenn Whelan started 28 games and came off the bench in 3 more in the EPL for Stoke last season. how exactly are they reserves for their club sides?
Itâs the almost total lack of trust he has in his players to produce anything creative that wrankles. Clearly weâre not talking about Brazil here but there is more in those players than theyâve showed of late. We really have developed into a kind of sub-Norway circa Euro 2000. A team whose tactics are completely rigid and inflexible and based on never falling behind. When we do we have nothing. The only real threat comes from set pieces and from the wingers and our wingers were easily double teamed by every team we faced, so they werenât a factor at all. Then it became a case of just hoof it up and hope for the best. Our tactics were easier to read than an Ann and Barry book.
At championship after championship England have been ridiculed for playing 4-4-2 and failing. We did exactly the same thing except far worse. Trapattoniâs tactics will get you to a certain level but here they were brutally found out. Canât believe Iâm agreeing with MBB here but he made a point that we deteriorated drastically after the longest period of time that Trapattoni had to work with the players. Itâs hard to argue against that. Certain things went against us like the penalty decision and a possible offside goal but overall the responsibility for the total non-performance of the team has to stop with the management. Obvious selection decisions like bringing on Cox instead of McClean against Croatia and starting Doyle ahead of Walters as well as the selection of Given were just schoolboy errors. Itâs all very well to be loyal to the players that had got us there but Trapattoni clearly failed to select the best 11. Picking based on loyalty is picking based on sentiment.
We werenât the only team that had the players together for a couple of weeks before the tournament. That shouldnât be a decisive factor.
We have made signifificant strides under Trap. Obviously the last three competitive games have been very poor but I donât buy the notion that we have been on a constant downward slope. As bad as Estonia were that was a terrific performance we put together out there.
Trapattoni isnât wedded to 4-4-2 as a formation heâs played all his life and wonât change now because heâs old. He chose that system with Ireland and it broadly worked. It certainly brought us more success than we had enojoyed in recent years and I fully endorsed deploying it at the tournament. Evidently that didnât work but we donât have enough quality midfielders to overload that area of the team.
A similar criticism of Trap is that heâs too conservative in his team selection. I didnât agree with all the teams picked in the Euros and certainly didnât agree with the substitutions made but bringing in Cox for Doyle and playing him midfield was far from conservative. It didnât work as intended but he didnât just stick to tried and trusted players. McClean was brought on ahead of Hunt. Walters got more opportunities than Long.
I have little faith in any of the possible replacements that are ever named. Kerr had his chance and failed in the decisive games unfortunately (and was even more defensive and negative than Trapattoni unfortunately). OâLeary is finished. The second rate English managers are second rate. McCarthy hasnât earned another opportunity.
There is no doubt that plenty of the players underperformed at the tournament - only Andrews played well and St Ledger probably played better than he does at club level but was worse than he has generally been for Ireland. The biggest disappointments were the senior players though. Given was always going to play, no matter who was in charge, and he was a disaster. Dunne absolutely earned the right to play all three games thanks to a consistently very good qualifying campaign with one exceptional peformance. He was woeful from the first minute of the first game unfortunately. OâShea should never play for us again. Duff flattered to deceive (referees) but created nothing. Keane was out of sorts. Less established senior players like McGeady and Doyle didnât contribute enough either.
Itâs not the job of the national team manager to develop the technical skills of the players as someone suggested further up this thread. Heâs a manager and a tactician, not a development worker.
I would like to see us change things for World Cup qualifying but I think weâre still badly lacking in the most important area of the pitch which is central midfield. Gibson never looks assured there. McCarthy might be part of the solution. Hoping that Meyler or someone else steps forward so we have a few options that means we can reward form and consistency and might allow us to play extra numbers in midfield.
Ideally a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 might suit us with McGeady and Duff or (more likely) Long/Walters playing behind either Cox/Walters/Keane. It would remove the predictability of the wingers, take defensive midfielders out of the equation more and still give us a decent shield if we had Andrews and McCathy sitting in front of the back four.
What are the FAIâs current priorities for the national team? I think that is a more important starting question than the identity of the manager, though that is clearly important too. Is it to do whatever it takes to qualify for the 2014 World Cup, or is it to try to build a team that could be reasonably competitive at a major championship in the medium term?
If itâs the former, then I wouldnât expect much to really change. Ward has to go and itâs probably time to move on from Duff (as a starter anyway). If Trap were to stay and qualification at all costs was the priority, Iâm not sure there would be any changes to either the general shape or the two starting central midfielders. Perhaps Gibson would start. I think he should, I think he offers a better chance of creating something with an ambitious pass through the centre to give us another avenue of attack other than the wings.
If itâs the latter, then I would expect more widespread changes. The likes of OâShea and Dunne would probably be moved on. I still think Robbie should be kept. At his best, he offers us a more genuine goalscoring threat than anyone else and I donât think it makes sense to get rid of all your experience at the same time. Besides, heâs only just short of his 32nd birthday. Not sure about Given. If Westwood gets regular first team football somewhere then Iâd probably throw him in. More importantly, some more ambition needs to be brought into the style of play and tinker with the shape if necessary. Take some risks, see what works. Probably try to build the midfield around McCarthy.
There are risks to both courses of action. With the former, I donât think weâd have much of a chance in finishing in the top two in a group with Germany and Sweden anyway. If we somehow managed it, I couldnât then see the performances at the WC being much better than they just were at the Euros. Therefore, Iâd be leaning towards the latter. I think we are capable of better than we just saw, though I take TASEâs general point that there isnât exactly a treasure trove of talent waiting in reserve. If the next campaign goes disasterously too, we would slide down the rankings fairly quickly hitting future seedings. Thatâs a risk worth taking I think though.
For what itâs worth, I see no reason why Trap wouldnât be the best man for the job in either case. Iâm fairly sure he knows well what the faults of the team are and is well capable of at least starting the rebuilding process before he leaves.
I disagree with the clamour from some quarters for the senior players to go but they will have to understand that they will increasingly become bit part players over time if they stay on. Given had a disastrous tournament but that was largely down to lack of fitness and the same argument could probably be made to a lesser extent about Dunne. At 36 Given could realistically be expected to last at least one more campaign. Looked at on an individual basis Iâd prefer if they all stayed available for selection. While there is clearly a real need to bring through young players it doesnât mean that the experience of the older players should simply be dispensed with, but some of them might become more peripheral as the next campaign wears on, particularly Duff and Keane.
go
he doesnt give a fiddlers about the domestic game. same can be said about most of the tommy scotland fans on this site. this should be reason enough to get rid of him. He wont be welcome at tolka this evening.
i agree he had crap players to deal with, its amusing to see people arguing over walters v doyle etc. all of these calls are marginal. the 11 players we started were by and large in the top 15 we have to chose from. one journeyman for another wouldnt have won us anything. he did put a bit of discipline on the team and impose a system. perhaps he could have built a team around comor clifford as he did with platini and totti.
For me its now all about the quatar world cup 2022. This is just 9.5 short domestic soccer seasons away. We need to focus on getting quality players staying here rather than following the posters on this forum over to scotland and england for their football.
This is the main reason why he should stay. There doesnât seem to be a viable alternative.
Also completely agree with your point that itâs not the national team managerâs responsibility to develop the technical skills of the players. He can only work with what heâs given.
Truth is our players are woefully limited and miles behind most other teams at the championships. This isnât going to change any time in the near future either.
Iâd like to see him go but Ken Earley made a good point in a recent podcast that no-one in the FAI has the balls to stand up to him so a change in coach is not going to happen. An agreement will be reached after a disastrous start to the next qualifying campaign
Trap did introduce discipline into the side when he took over. Many forget how shit Dunne and JOS were as international players before he was in charge. Duff and Keane were on about retiring after the Stan shambles. We were in a right state. Results and organisation brought confidence. The reason to protect the defence with two holding players was simple with players like Kilbane and later Ward in the side, he had to.
However it became clear in the Russian games that the system he imposed was going to be destroyed against better sides. The Slovakia game at home was as bad as Irish performance as was produced here. I lost faith in him after the game in Moscow where he stupidly set up the side the same as had been dismantled in Dublin.
A lot of luck fell our way in the crucial home game against Armenia while Estonia self imploded too in the playoff. To be fair we thoroughly took them to pieces that night. The Bosnia friendly gave no indication of the collapse about to happen. I didnât see the Hungary game but even Trap himself seemed worried after that.
Trap also wasnât brave enough to drop players. For all Gibsonâs limitations, Whelan had an awful qualifying campaign and should not
have started in the Euros. His choice was limited in terms of individuals but the system also needed to change. It seemed to me that a number of senior
players were clearly unfit. All Traps judgement calls were wrong really during the Euros. His substitutions were bordering on farcical, particularly for an experienced coach. In qualifying he tended to get these right, starting Walters etc but his good judgement disappeared.
Ultimately at all levels it is easier to replace the manager than 11 players. Particularly at international level. All the players self belief built up over 4 years has been destroyed in the space of a week. Trap should go.