James McClean

He failed to stick the ball in the mixer

he dropped o’dowda from the match day squad.

The issue is that all the good things he does is when we don't have possession of the football. 

We really need to move the ball around the pitch better, create better chances (7 goals ffs) 

Your stats show that he lost the ball 20 odd times! That's insane.

That stat was posted in response to the ones used earlier in the thread. I also stated that you can't base analysis on single stats so I've no idea what point you're making here. At no stage did I imply that stat meant he played well or not. 

Exactly. And I'd be interested to know how many of those "possession lost" stats are actually ones where it ended up going out for a corner or a throw for us.

He is a limited footballer but his heart and effort are worth a huge amount. I'd rather have a winger that puts in five bad crosses and one good one but wins it back six times in a match than a winger who puts in a couple of marginally better crosses but is never bothered chasing back. The effort he puts in is an inspiration to the crowd and more importantly to the other players, along with being disheartening to the opposition. Now it may well be that that is better utilised from the bench than from the start but it certainly has an impact that isn't easily measured in a "possession lost" stat. Both are important.

And I actually thought some of his crosses last night were intelligent enough. More than once, he didn't just whip it in in the air, which the Danes were clearly expecting, but tried to pull it back and find a man along the ground. It didn't work but it wasn't aimless.

The one criticism was the roy of the rovers attempt from 30 yards when McGoldrick was in space on the left hand side. Other than that, we got exactly the performance expected from McClean last night.