"bit of balls" thread ( keane podcast)

I find it peculiar how people can justify the inclusion of Kilbane and Green period. I also find it peculiar how people can justify Andy Reid being left out because of a personal grudge. Trapattoni isn't paid to be friends with the players. If Andy Reid and anyone other than McShane came on in Paris, we would have went to the World Cup. In the words of Didier Drogba "it is a f**king disgrace".

Jokerman wrote: I find it peculiar how people can justify the inclusion of Kilbane and Green period. I also find it peculiar how people can justify Andy Reid being left out because of a personal grudge. Trapattoni isn't paid to be friends with the players. If Andy Reid and anyone other than McShane came on in Paris, we would have went to the World Cup. In the words of Didier Drogba "it is a f**king disgrace".

Stoked Up wrote: Jokerman wrote: I find it peculiar how people can justify the inclusion of Kilbane and Green period. I also find it peculiar how people can justify Andy Reid being left out because of a personal grudge. Trapattoni isn't paid to be friends with the players. If Andy Reid and anyone other than McShane came on in Paris, we would have went to the World Cup. In the words of Didier Drogba "it is a f**king disgrace". And you're another fool that cannot see that we did improve under Trap and given the paucity of players available, we did overachieve. In regards to Kilbane, I don't think it will be too long before the new youngsters will take his place, but for as long as Trap sees him as a safer pair of hands, I'm prepared to get behind him. Green is playing week in and week out for Derby. Look, he's clearly not premiership standard, but he's an honest grafter that's as good or as bad as much else we have to offer in midfield (McCarthy excluded. Many have been suggesting Wilson/Lawrence/Fahey as possible replacements. Wilson has yet to claim a starting place at Stoke. Lawrence was let go and dropped a division and whilst I love Keith Fahey, he's really only a bit player at Birmingham so far. Look, I'm really tired of the Andy Reid argument. Where's he now? On loan to a championship struggler. Some of you think he's much better than he actually is/was. Says it all.

I'm not a fool. Will the same people be singing Trapattoni's praises when we don't qualify for Euro 2012?  

Edited by Jokerman - 15 Nov 2010 at 6:54am

Stoked Up wrote: Jokerman wrote: I'm not a fool. Will the same people be singing Trapattoni's praises when we don't qualify for Euro 2012? Let's look at objectively. We are third seeds. If we make the playoffs we've overachieved. End of.

God I am so sick of this defeatist attitude. Is it any wonder we never qualify for anything?

Jokerman wrote: Stoked Up wrote: Jokerman wrote: I'm not a fool. Will the same people be singing Trapattoni's praises when we don't qualify for Euro 2012? Let's look at objectively. We are third seeds. If we make the playoffs we've overachieved. End of. God I am so sick of this defeatist attitude. Is it any wonder we never qualify for anything?

It's not defeatist in the slightest. I'm stating facts. We are the third seeds in our group. If we finish better than that we've overachieved*. Do you not understand simple maths?

* Like we did in the WC qualifiers, when again we were third seeds.


Edited by Stoked Up - 15 Nov 2010 at 7:01am

Stoked Up wrote: Jokerman wrote: Stoked Up wrote: Jokerman wrote: I'm not a fool. Will the same people be singing Trapattoni's praises when we don't qualify for Euro 2012? Let's look at objectively. We are third seeds. If we make the playoffs we've overachieved. End of. God I am so sick of this defeatist attitude. Is it any wonder we never qualify for anything? It's not defeatist in the slightest. I'm stating facts. We are the third seeds in our group. If we finish better than that we've overachieved*. Do you not understand simple maths? * Like we did in the WC qualifiers, when again we were third seeds.

(A) We are better than Slovakia. (B) If we don't beat a big team for the first time in over a decade next year, then we won't be qualifying for a tournament AGAIN. By your skewed logic, the same teams would qualify for tournaments over and over again.

We"re 3rd seeds for a reason due to not qualifing for a major tournament since 2002 and not beating any big team of note since then....The World Rankings are aload of p**s but they hold the key to Qualifing for Tournaments nowadays with the seedings....We can talk about Russia and Slovakia not being better than us , so far we havent shown in 4 qualifiers that we are a side capable of qualifing for the Euros "but" we have alot of matches to play with a group of players "if picked" i.e. Wilson , Coleman , Foley , McCarthy etc etc that are players that i personally think can get us back on the road for Ukraine/Poland!! Negativity gets this country nowhere trust Trap and the lads come on Ireland

Stoked Up wrote: CPS89 wrote: demographics of a country is such a cop out of an argument...croatia, a country with a population smaller than us got to the semi finals of wc98 and were one of the favourites for euro 2008. They massively overachieved then and you conveniently forget to mention that like ourselves, they failed to qualify for the last WC. That said, Croatia is an absolute hotbed of soccer and the standards are generally much higher than here. [QUOTE] foley, coleman, fahey, mccarthy, wilson, stokes,

You mention all these lads in relation to the lads who played in the last campaign. Can't you see that there's little difference between all of them?

I've snipped your comments because clearly you don't really follow the progress of Irish lads playing in England to make plausible cases for their squad inclusion.
Many of the lads on either side of your argument, were not getting their games at their clubs last season and some this season. Your argument is nonsensical. Replacing like with like, won't suddenly transform us.

Look, I'll say it again, which I've said before in similar threads.
Trap decides the tactics and the players that suits, not us. Of course we all want our own favourites to play, (In the past I've made cases for Delap as an impact sub and McCarthy) but he's sees guys that fit the bill and others that don't.

And yes, we have overachieved with Trap, certainly in comparism to the previous three previous campaigns. What else have we to go on?
Arguably, we had better players 4-6 years ago when the likes of Keane/Duff/Dunne/Givens/Finnan/Carr were in their prime and did not even make play offs..

Anyone who cannot see that, is no different from the average barstooler that comes up with knee jerk reactions as to why we are not better than we are and offering the instant solution by naming bit players who will suddenly transform us into world beaters.
This is the sort of rationale that has our neighbours across the pond scratching their heads as to why they mostly underachieve.[/QUOTE]

This is the sort of attitude why we will never progress in sporting terms, our benchmark is set too low, as long as you have your few pints and wave your inflatable hammer you will be happy out, you are probably too locked to even watch the game, as a few in the singing section are guilty of. If you aim for mediocrity you get failure, you have to aim high to achieve success. I’m not saying nor are Trapped and Jokerman, that we should be winning tournaments, but should deffo be qualifying for them as counties with similar and less talented squads are doing so consistently. If you think trap has over-achieved you obviously have not got a breeze mate, he is the 3^rd Highest paid international manager in world football, do you think his job description was not to qualify given his outlandishly high salary? People go on about Henrys handball, but even the players were the first to admit that they had opportunity after opportunity to put (a french team in turmoil) them away, but that lack of mental strength (or balls as I say) prevented them. It’s no coincidence that Italy (one of the poorest Italian team in years) scored a late equaliser against us either. We don’t have the leadership, and stomach to beat the big teams. Our record against the big teams confirms this…ye would agree that we have a miles better squad than Norn Ireland, yet they have managed to beat, England and Spain.  I’m sorry lads your argument that we have no quality is complete rubbish, you said Greece have a better squad than us, in this you lose all your credibility.

Citizen wrote: [ This is the sort of attitude why we will never progress in sporting terms, our benchmark is set too low, as long as you have your few pints and wave your inflatable hammer you will be happy out, you are probably too locked to even watch the game, as a few in the singing section are guilty of. If you aim for mediocrity you get failure, you have to aim high to achieve success. I’m not saying nor are Trapped and Jokerman, that we should be winning tournaments, but should deffo be qualifying for them as counties with similar and less talented squads are doing so consistently. If you think trap has over-achieved you obviously have not got a breeze mate, he is the 3rd Highest paid international manager in world football, do you think his job description was not to qualify given his outlandishly high salary? People go on about Henrys handball, but even the players were the first to admit that they had opportunity after opportunity to put (a french team in turmoil) them away, but that lack of mental strength (or balls as I say) prevented them. It’s no coincidence that Italy (one of the poorest Italian team in years) scored a late equaliser against us either. We don’t have the leadership, and stomach to beat the big teams. Our record against the big teams confirms this…ye would agree that we have a miles better squad than Norn Ireland, yet they have managed to beat, England and Spain.  I’m sorry lads your argument that we have no quality is complete rubbish, you said Greece have a better squad than us, in this you lose all your credibility.