Enda Stevens

We might have to get creative in September. Realistically it is an issue that we don't have a genuine backup option for Enda Stevens who is no spring chicken.

CillDara wrote: We might have to get creative in September. Realistically it is an issue that we don't have a genuine backup option for Enda Stevens who is no spring chicken. Options over the next while would seem to be: James McClean - out of favour at club level himself. Ryan Manning - arguably next in line but always seems in and out of his club sides.  Joel Bagan - not sure if 100% on board yet but 19 year old left back at Cardiff who started their game last weekend. Liam Scales - Flying for Rovers, likely to get a move to Celtic or elsewhere by September.  Truthfully of that lot I would think scales is your best bet for the September games, although maybe it would be a tough task throwing him in against Portugal on his debut.

Badgersboys9 wrote: gufct wrote: extremely harsh on Enda Steven’s uncalled for really . What is? He's injured and likely to miss the next games.

DublinScouse1916 wrote: Badgersboys9 wrote: Jokanović: "Enda will still be a few weeks out. We are thinking about surgery. We are thinking about 4-6 weeks." Has never played well for us so no loss

colemanY2K wrote: CillDara wrote: We might have to get creative in September. Realistically it is an issue that we don't have a genuine backup option for Enda Stevens who is no spring chicken. Options over the next while would seem to be: James McClean - out of favour at club level himself. Ryan Manning - arguably next in line but always seems in and out of his club sides.  Joel Bagan - not sure if 100% on board yet but 19 year old left back at Cardiff who started their game last weekend. Liam Scales - Flying for Rovers, likely to get a move to Celtic or elsewhere by September.  Truthfully of that lot I would think scales is your best bet for the September games, although maybe it would be a tough task throwing him in against Portugal on his debut. matt doherty?

BrendanD88 wrote: Badgersboys9 wrote: gufct wrote: extremely harsh on Enda Steven’s uncalled for really . What is? He's injured and likely to miss the next games. Woahhhh calm down, that’s uncalled for.

You Tell Me wrote: Hopefully means there's no prospect of us going back to 4-3-3 for the September games now - it's obvious Kenny is desperate to get back to his favourite formation but we only have one half decent left back and he's now injured so that will force him to go with the formation that actually suits the players we have.

If he was desperate to get back to 4-3-3 wouldn't we played it in the summer?

I think 4-3-3 won't be used until next year's nation's league games. I'd rather we continue to play three at the back though, and have the U21s play the same formation. Would probably suit them more than the seniors.

He has always been quite wedded to 4-3-3 or a variant of it. But 3-5-2 is clearly the setup that fits the players we have, given our lack of decent left backs, right wing forwards and 10s. Just have a bad feeling that sooner or later he will once again try to shoehorn in players into a 4-3-3 to fit the way he thinks the game should be played. Hopefully not though, the Hungary game showed that we have the players to compete if they're set up properly.

That's fine, but in that case let's use a formation that suits the players we have available to us and stick with it. This is not a club team and we can't just sign players to fit the manager's preferred formation. We do not have the players to play 4-3-3 or a variant of it (4-2-3-1 etc) as we don't have good enough left backs, we don't have an obvious 10 to play a Hoolahan role, we don't have a natural right sided forward who is good enough and we don't have a centre forward who is good enough to play as a lone striker at international level.