Micks first eleven.

In lots of matches!He had some good performances for us, but he also had plenty of flaws in his game. He had the aforementioned problem with unnecessary risk-taking,on-top of that he always seemed to struggle to play a full 90 minutes and he had a tendency to hold on to the ball too long looking for a 'key' pass. He was possibly unfortunate that some of these problems could have been corrected if he had been picked up by a 'big' club when younger, but that was the way he was.

I agree about putting him on a note though, he is the ideal size.

As if the Germans would allow some little Irish pixie-head nonentity on their currency.

Was looking at some Sky yoke there last week, they named 13 full England internationals still eligible for U21, most are club regulars (Alli, TAA, Sessegnon) or have at least started to make regular appearances at club level (Gray, Foden, Walker-Peters etc). Meanwhile, Loew gets rid of 3 WC winners who are 29/30. I'm not intending to compare us with England or Germany, that's futile, but our answer to boosting the squad involves bringing back Whelan, McGoldrick & McGeady, and introducing lads heading for 30 like Collins & Amond (again, realise they might not make final cut)

We have a big age gap there between the current core crew (Randolph, Westwood, Duffy, Coleman, Doherty, McClean, Brady, McCarthy, Hendrick, Clark, K. Long, S.Long, Hourihane etc)who are mainly 27-31 and the next generation of the likes of Idah, Parrott, Obafemi, who aren't out of their teens yet and not yet established. In the middle, we have O'Dowda (23) , Alan Browne (23), Maguire (24)- but there really isn't enough lads of the ages 20-25 playing at any kind of decent level for us to remain competitive for much more than 2-3 years. 

Things can change, some of those lads will soldier on well in to their 30's, and a few new faces will appear, but the pool is getting shallower all the time. Mick might be able to stave off the dip for a while & leave it as Kenny's problem, but I think the problem is coming for us one way or another in the next few years. 

Agree with PM on the set pieces, said it many times, we haven't had anyone decent at them since Liam Lawrence left  a few managers ago. Must be nearly 8 years now, while we wait for Brady to take an odd good one, when he isn't injured or suspended. I get the feeling the oul set pieces could be quite important for us this year !

 

macmanaman and Mahoney as well

Hourihane would be fine in a 3 man midfield imo.

Perhaps with McCarthy/Arter behind him.

I feel like we've had 17 years of a fallow period already