Ireland vs Scotland JUNE 11th Match Thread

zizu Kilbane wrote: Well....what now?

Kenny tampers with the floodlights, gets the game abandoned and get awarded a draw

Kelleher

Manning/McLean (we're struggling on the left side. I'd actually have the 2 boys in the 21s over these)

Duffy

Collins

O'Shea

Cullen

Knight 

Brown (more mobile than Hendrick/Hourihane/ Molumby..that's the only reason I'd start him. Again I'd probably have Smallbone, Kilkenny, Ronan,Jack Byrne all in here ahead of these 4)

Ogbene

Obafemi

Parrot

Tierney plays lcb for Scotland.  Robertson plays lwb. 

McTominay can play RCB or CM for Scotland.  

Adams plays up front.

McGregor is a CM

McGinn plays AM and

Cooper plays CB. 

Not sure if your point as they play a similar formation to us and don’t play with wingers. 

The manager has a whole lot more to work with than Kenny has. 

You're kind of proving my point there to be honest. Which is that Clarke is having to play those players out of position because they're so short of natural options. McTominay has been a disaster for them at centre back incidentally but their alternatives are no better. Which is not too surprising as he's a midfielder. Tierney is not a natural centre back, he just plays there to fill a hole, does a better job of it than McTominay but it's still not his proper position. Hickey was played out of position on the right against Ukraine to fill another hole. They have no good goalkeepers under the age of 39 and even the 39 year old is at Hearts for a reason. 

Clarke is getting the best or close to it out if what he has. Kenny isn't managing anywhere near that. 

He is not capable of improving us he has shown this already he has his chance and couldn’t find the business.

He refuses to select players on form instead insists they get a few camps under their belt first!!

What a load of thrash fair enough if we are winning all round us but it’s not and the advice is from himself and Andrew’s as Roy says “ do me a favour”

He is shooting him self in the foot 

League and for top 6 clubs.  We had one lad who

Was a premier league regular last night. 

Clarke has far more at his disposal including champions league winner and epl league winner and

Lads regularly playing at highest level. 

I want to see a lot of changes for Saturday, and a few callups.

                   Kelleher

         Lenihan Egan* Collins

Ebosele Molumby Kilkenny Manning

                   Browne

          Parrott        Obafemi

*If Egan is OK start him instead of Duffy. O'Shea was awful when he came on, Duffy still the better choice there.

Cullen can't start 3 games he's knackered, his performance will only dip further.

Robertson is tired after a long season, Eboseles youthful exuberance would hopefully give him a tough time.

Kilkenny & Smallbone callups. Though with Smallbones injury record I wouldn't start him, 15' off the bench.

Get McGrath in the squad, he's not fit to start, but he's surely good for 15'.

Knight put in a big shift last night, don't think he'd be ready to go again for Saturday.

John Nice wrote: I think this is disingenuous to say the least. I think to any even semi-neutral observer it is abundantly clear that Clarke has significantly better footballers at his disposal. He also has the advantage of a semi-reasonable domestic league to draw further players from. Kenny has a squad of ageing pros who cant get first team football and young lads starting out on their careers- the ones in between 23-28 are largely simply not good enough. There is a very significant gap between the talent of the two playing pools.  Likewise Ukraine last night and their so called 2nd team which largely featured players playing regularly at the likes of Shakhtar and Dinamo Kiev. I have no problem with lads calling out Kenny, but to do so without acknowledging the limitations of the players available to him seems churlish.

That's the major difference between our squad & Scotlands. They have a lot of players in that 24-30  range (physical prime years) where we have missing generations.

In 5 years we could have a similar looking squad to what theirs looks like now. Maybe.