Turkey vs ROI-- 23rd March

Maccatacca wrote: Bo Jackson wrote: We should have had the f**king balls to tell O'Neill you know what, that contract agreement, we've changed our mind. It should have happened after Denmark. It could have happened when Stoke and Everton came knocking. But no, the safe option, much like what we see on the pitch We have more than enough new faces, a mix of talent and potential, to build a decent squad going forward. O'Neill is not the man to do that. Tonights display proves that. O'Neill has done great, he's overseen some great games and produced marvellous results but there is nothing to suggest he will do the same next campaign, never mind better. Completely agree with all of this.  The minimum you'd expect from an Ireland side, is for us to be well-drilled, meaning we're very well organized, clinical in our minority of possession, able to defend set pieces and more importantly, able to regularly threaten from our own frees and corners. At the moment, we are literally the opposite. We've conceded two goals from corners in our last two games. You'll hear that the personnel / formation change will make it difficult for us to defend such chances, I'd argue that a team like ourselves should be so well drilled on how to defend corners and frees, that it shouldn't matter who starts, or what formation we play. Especially when we're playing five at the back, if anything it should even easier to defend a corner with an extra centre-half against Turkey's loan striker.   We are often told that Ireland are a better team than the sum of our parts. During the Euro's this rang through at times, but ever since then we've played well below what we're capable of. Obviously we do not possess a heap of quality players, but neither do most international teams outside the World's top 20. If you look at a decent Championship side, or a lower Premier League team like Brighton, you'll see that most of the players are comfortable in possession, are aware of their roles, and are well disciplined, is it too much to demand that we could at least try to play similarly to teams that possess a similar quality of player to ourselves?  Despite having some of the Championships best players in Maguire, Hourihane, Doherty and Browne and a sprinkling of decent Premier League standard players like Coleman, Brady, Duffy, Rice and Arter, we can't pass the ball more than five times in succession - yet the exact same players, playing for a similar standard club side, look comfortable in possession. It's actually mind boggling. We've one of the Premier League's best right-backs in Seamus Coleman, I know tonight was his first game back for us, but he looked terrified in possession. Every time he got the ball on the right he was isolated, and turned backwards. While I admire Coleman as a player, I don't think we've ever seen him play to his full ability for Ireland, and I don't think its his fault. In the past 2/3 seasons I've seen Coleman individually tear top Premier League teams' new ones, yet when he plays for us, he rarely gets past the half-way line more than three times per game. I hated watching us under Trap, he was awful towards the end of his reign, but at least he had the fundamentals right.  MON arguably believes in this Irish team's footballing ability even less than Trap did, so you'd think that he might at least organize the team in a way that reflected that. Did we often concede from a set-piece under Trap? (I think Slovakia scored one corner against us)  People will point to results like Cardiff and Vienna as a counter argument, and while Vienna was for the most part a decent performance, our result in Cardiff was down to Gareth Bale's absence, and Joe Allen's injury during the game. Beating Wales without Bale and Allen is not performing above the sum of our parts. It's literally two teams made up of average Premier League, and decent Championship players, going head to head in a fiery derby. Thankfully our players were tougher than the Welsh on the night. In reality, the sheer physicality of players like Duffy, McClean, Hendrick and Meyler was the difference between the two sides. If Allen and Bale played, the same level of performance would have seen us lose that game. The first leg in Copenhagen was a carbon copy of Cardiff, minus the goal. Beat the sh*t out of the Danes for 90 minutes, and luckily for us, the poor Danes who were expecting a game of football actually tried to play us at our own game. Then the Dublin leg comes around, and the game plan is the same, except genius MON gets lucky that we manage to jammy one in from a set piece, delighted with an early goal, he proceeds to encourage his team to beat the sh*t out of Denmark for the rest of the game.   Except unlike the Welsh, the Danes didn't let the blood rush to their heads, and managed to recover from their nightmare start, the Danes actually proceeded to play a bit of football with their brains rather than their bodies, and hey presto we started gifting them goals left right and centre. Whats all of the above got to do with tonight's friendly you might ask?  Well tonight just confirmed that O'Neill is as lazy as ever. He had a week to try and instill a few ideas into the players. But, we're still leaking goals from quick corner kicks, we're still not passing the ball for more than five combinations, despite more attacking players being on the pitch, and we're still not pressing the opposition in midfield. Now the team faces another lengthy spell ahead of the next international game, which is a poorly timed friendly against the high flying French who will put us to the sword on the way to the World Cup. Tonight was a chance to try something new, and to instill some confidence, the result really wouldn't of mattered if we'd had seen something different, but we saw nothing. The fact that we lost playing the same old way, with a young, new team, is demoralizing, and does not bode well for the future.

Excellent post

Zinedine Kilbane 110 wrote: What the fans want - about 8 new faces with 4 new caps What the fans will get - about 4 new faces with 2 new caps

Will said. Apart from being a mediocore performance, still glad Rice got to make a good impact
That lad has a bright future in The Ireland squad.

Maccatacca wrote: Bo Jackson wrote: We should have had the f**king balls to tell O'Neill you know what, that contract agreement, we've changed our mind. It should have happened after Denmark. It could have happened when Stoke and Everton came knocking. But no, the safe option, much like what we see on the pitch We have more than enough new faces, a mix of talent and potential, to build a decent squad going forward. O'Neill is not the man to do that. Tonights display proves that. O'Neill has done great, he's overseen some great games and produced marvellous results but there is nothing to suggest he will do the same next campaign, never mind better. Completely agree with all of this.  The minimum you'd expect from an Ireland side, is for us to be well-drilled, meaning we're very well organized, clinical in our minority of possession, able to defend set pieces and more importantly, able to regularly threaten from our own frees and corners. At the moment, we are literally the opposite. We've conceded two goals from corners in our last two games. You'll hear that the personnel / formation change will make it difficult for us to defend such chances, I'd argue that a team like ourselves should be so well drilled on how to defend corners and frees, that it shouldn't matter who starts, or what formation we play. Especially when we're playing five at the back, if anything it should even easier to defend a corner with an extra centre-half against Turkey's loan striker.   We are often told that Ireland are a better team than the sum of our parts. During the Euro's this rang through at times, but ever since then we've played well below what we're capable of. Obviously we do not possess a heap of quality players, but neither do most international teams outside the World's top 20. If you look at a decent Championship side, or a lower Premier League team like Brighton, you'll see that most of the players are comfortable in possession, are aware of their roles, and are well disciplined, is it too much to demand that we could at least try to play similarly to teams that possess a similar quality of player to ourselves?  Despite having some of the Championships best players in Maguire, Hourihane, Doherty and Browne and a sprinkling of decent Premier League standard players like Coleman, Brady, Duffy, Rice and Arter, we can't pass the ball more than five times in succession - yet the exact same players, playing for a similar standard club side, look comfortable in possession. It's actually mind boggling. We've one of the Premier League's best right-backs in Seamus Coleman, I know tonight was his first game back for us, but he looked terrified in possession. Every time he got the ball on the right he was isolated, and turned backwards. While I admire Coleman as a player, I don't think we've ever seen him play to his full ability for Ireland, and I don't think its his fault. In the past 2/3 seasons I've seen Coleman individually tear top Premier League teams' new ones, yet when he plays for us, he rarely gets past the half-way line more than three times per game. I hated watching us under Trap, he was awful towards the end of his reign, but at least he had the fundamentals right.  MON arguably believes in this Irish team's footballing ability even less than Trap did, so you'd think that he might at least organize the team in a way that reflected that. Did we often concede from a set-piece under Trap? (I think Slovakia scored one corner against us)  People will point to results like Cardiff and Vienna as a counter argument, and while Vienna was for the most part a decent performance, our result in Cardiff was down to Gareth Bale's absence, and Joe Allen's injury during the game. Beating Wales without Bale and Allen is not performing above the sum of our parts. It's literally two teams made up of average Premier League, and decent Championship players, going head to head in a fiery derby. Thankfully our players were tougher than the Welsh on the night. In reality, the sheer physicality of players like Duffy, McClean, Hendrick and Meyler was the difference between the two sides. If Allen and Bale played, the same level of performance would have seen us lose that game. The first leg in Copenhagen was a carbon copy of Cardiff, minus the goal. Beat the sh*t out of the Danes for 90 minutes, and luckily for us, the poor Danes who were expecting a game of football actually tried to play us at our own game. Then the Dublin leg comes around, and the game plan is the same, except genius MON gets lucky that we manage to jammy one in from a set piece, delighted with an early goal, he proceeds to encourage his team to beat the sh*t out of Denmark for the rest of the game.   Except unlike the Welsh, the Danes didn't let the blood rush to their heads, and managed to recover from their nightmare start, the Danes actually proceeded to play a bit of football with their brains rather than their bodies, and hey presto we started gifting them goals left right and centre. Whats all of the above got to do with tonight's friendly you might ask?  Well tonight just confirmed that O'Neill is as lazy as ever. He had a week to try and instill a few ideas into the players. But, we're still leaking goals from quick corner kicks, we're still not passing the ball for more than five combinations, despite more attacking players being on the pitch, and we're still not pressing the opposition in midfield. Now the team faces another lengthy spell ahead of the next international game, which is a poorly timed friendly against the high flying French who will put us to the sword on the way to the World Cup. Tonight was a chance to try something new, and to instill some confidence, the result really wouldn't of mattered if we'd had seen something different, but we saw nothing. The fact that we lost playing the same old way, with a young, new team, is demoralizing, and does not bode well for the future.

Very well put and spot on.

I have no confidence in the current set up progressing us.

Has an awful feel of Traps last campaign about the current situation.

pre Madonna wrote: dubstep wrote: Has an awful feel of Traps last campaign about the current situation. In short, yes. It has been that way since Denmark, unfortunately. I will always like MON, I will respect what he did with us, but, as with certain relationships we all have in life, the damage is irreparable.

Agreed
One campaign too many.
Mon/Trap/Mick all did the same.

Edited by Zinedine Kilbane 110 - 24 Mar 2018 at 2:41pm

We're in the long goodbye phase at the moment. It's over but nobody will admit it.

Just watched the match, and I’ve got to say it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Not a great performance, but in terms of a first match with a new cycle of players, a lot was learned. And wasn’t that the point?

Declan Rice did more with his 20 mins in midfield than any player has done in that position for us in the last 10 years. Duffy was immense. A back three gives him space to dominate and stops him getting stranded in the channels where he can get shown up. Hogan and Maguire may be too similar to play together. Likewise Hendrick and Browne. Who-rihane is not the player we need to create things in the middle of the park. That is a vacancy that needs to be filled though. McClean: being a sound lad does not make you a good player. Long and Doyle looked like able deputies.

I think you take that team and introduce some of our better ball players ( Brady for McClean, anybody for Hourihane) and we could have won the game. Don’t forget also that we were playing a good Turkish side. Except for their number 5 who was just Okay





Edited by DeclanDaly - 24 Mar 2018 at 5:16pm

Was optimistic before the game that there would be some change but unfortunately not. Really need to start getting Hourihane and Hendrick playing well. Great to see Rice doing well.

dubstep wrote: Has an awful feel of Traps last campaign about the current situation.

I was saying the same last night. It's death by a thousand cuts.