Too bad Sean McGinty and Liam McAlinden have not seemed to come up the pike. Both at least 6' tall and both only 23.
Robbie Keane debuted at 17 so possibly even sooner.Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Cannot fault MON so far but sometimes I wonder just how much effort is really going on behind the scenes to get someone on board. Maybe we need to put an add on the paper. Strikers to apply.
"We lost because we didn't win"- Ronaldo
Too bad Sean McGinty and Liam McAlinden have not seemed to come up the pike. Both at least 6' tall and both only 23.
the MON Stud Farm has a nice ring to it.
Walters is only 33 dammit! Stop adding years. (same birthday as me but I've retired)
The only bright moment in the game really was when O'Dowda went on a forward run, it kind of work up an understandably sleepy crowd.
He is at Bristol City, not sure if he is pullling up trees there though.
O'Kane started that move with a firm pass, later he made one which was rather too firm, although maybe O Dowda could have got on the end of it
if he anticpated it.
Seems pointless paying crossing into the box when our strikers are too short to have a chance of getting on the end of anything, which indeed the didn't.
So it is perhaps interesting that perhap for the first time in the hsotory of Irish football we dominated posession.
Needlessly to say we lost.
Hence the lesson is if you are crap at football don't try to play it.
I just realised the weird think about O'Kane is he passes the ball forward!!!!!!!!!
He makes forward passes all the time, sometimes he gets slapped for them!
Just thought I'd weigh in on the striker issue - while there is certainly cause for concern, with three main strikers unlikely to play through the next qualifying campaign, there have been some recent developments that have given cause for some optimism for the future. Admittedly we had high hopes that the likes of Mikey Drennan, Terry Dixon, Sean Maguire and Aiden O'Brien would make the breakthrough but right now we have about close to a dozen options worth looking at over the next couple of years, and that's assuming neither Hogan nor Jutkiewicz comes on board:
- Firstly we should look at options who will definitely be available for the next campaign and while the names David McGoldrick, Adam Rooney and Cillian Sheridan don't set the pulse racing, they are all decent, experienced strikers capable of scoring goals and Rooney in particular would be handy to have in the event of a penalty shoot-out
- Will Keane expressed a strong desire to be picked just before a long-term injury interrupted his efforts to establish himself at Hull - his progress next season should be monitored
- 19-year-old Gerry McDonagh got a few goals earlier this season on loan for Wrexham and got his first league goal on loan at Cambridge - he also has a decent scoring record at underage level at his parent club, Nottingham Forest. He will hopefully be playing at a higher level within the next couple of seasons
- We have two underage forwards at Everton - Courtney Duffus and Sam Byrne. Hopefully they can get decent loan moves next season and give us a chance to evaluate their chances
- Reece Grego-Cox seemed to have slipped off the radar a little, with a so-so loan period at Newport, where he failed to register a goal and picked up an injury. However he then returned to QPR and promptly scored five goals in two games for their U-23s
- After a period where his career seemed to be going nowhere, Sean Maguire's outstanding scoring record at Cork City will hopefully lead him following Horgan, Boyle, Forrester and Towell in getting a shot in England
- Ronan Hale had an excellent scoring record for Birmingham's U-18s and has moved up to their U-23s
- I guess the young striker we're watching most closely is probably Glen McAuley with sixteen goals for Liverpool's U-18s this season (plus one for the National U-17s in the elite round recently)
- However the goalscoring star of qualifying for the U-17s is surely Aaron Connolly, with seven goals in six games (some of them crackers). On top of that he's got three in his first two games for Brighton's U23s
- Our other two strikers in the U-17s, Rowan Roache and Adam Idah, both look useful: Roache has already featured for Blackpool's first team; Idah, who only turned 16 a few weeks ago, got four goals in the qualifying campaign and will surely be moving on from College Corinthians soon, especially if he impresses in the finals.
- Two young lads in Southampton's U-18s, Jonathan Afolabi and Michael Obafemi, seem to be doing well, with Afolabi already after scoring for their U-23s
Of course it's possible that none of these lads will make the breakthrough to high-level professional football but with this number coming through it's also possible that five or six will make it and that by the time the qualifiers for Euro 2024 (or even World Cup 2022) roll around, we'll be saying "whatever happened to that striker crisis we were all so worried about?".
That is, if our forays into AI haven't led to the Machines taking over by then
I think we need to get away from the view that we can only be creative with hoolahan in the team. its the mindset of the management and by extension the players that we need to change. we need to risk a little more in the oppositions half and be less inclined to go long all the time. its just too predictable. we were creative against both france and Italy in the euros when hoolahan didn't start so why not again?
the north don't have more creative players than us on paper but play much better football from what I have seen
Preston's Callum Robinson is another striker whose eligibility has been confirmed. Whether or not he'd be keen to make a switch from the FA to the FAI is another matter, but there's a possibility there.
Great post. Just in relation to Westwood, I don't think there's any question but he was caught flat footed. I guess the two sides of the debate are whether or not Hourihane ducking exempts him from blame, for being caught flat footed, or whether he should have still recovered to make the save in any case.
Well I think he knew if he continued the way he was going he would have saved it, so there's going to be an obvious frustration with himself. That's not to say when he watched it back later he wouldn't have be more annoyed with Hourihane than himself. I certainly would have been.
I agree about the nitpicking though. We're in a decent position with goalkeepers.
Was Westwood definitely caught flat-footed? I'm not sure. He's on the move across the goal right from the moment Magnússon kicks the ball.
Westwood just doesn't complete his dive for some reason. Maybe, as Stutts said above, he was anticipating a possible deflection and so didn't commit to a dive as a result. That's not necessarily to say he'd have managed to save it anyway had he dived. It all happened very quickly.
Incidentally, does Westwood bless himself just as Magnússon begins his run-up?
I still think Hourihane staying grounded and ducking his head out of the way is unforgivable. In my opinion, he must accept primary responsibility for the concession of the goal. The free-kick was hit low and ended up in the far corner from where Westwood had positioned himself; that was the side of the goal that was supposed to have been covered by the wall whilst Westwood was covering the other side. If the ball goes over a jumping wall and in, I don't think anyone would be holding anyone to blame; we'd just acknowledge it was a perfectly-placed free-kick that gave the keeper no chance.
I think he stops because he can't see the flight of the ball until it's past the wall, therefore instinctively expecting it to hit the wall, as it should have. If Magnusson had got the trajectory he wanted it would have been visible to Westwood earlier and he probably would have got across to save it, as he wouldn't have paused and it wasn't very powerfully struck. When I say he was flat-footed, I mean once he stops he's unable to recover his momentum to get across. We really need to get to the bottom of this.
How on earth can Westwood be given any blame for the Iceland goal??The goal came because of Egan's silly foul and then all because Hourihane and Hendrick were too lazy to jump off the ground to stop the ball. Their failure to jump meant that Magnusson stuck the ball right in the corner. What goalkeeper was going to save that?
Last edited by TrapAPony; 30/03/2017 at 1:27 PM.
"We lost because we didn't win"- Ronaldo
The ridiculous over analysis is the problem. It was a good goal. Hourihane and Hendrick don't have to jump, sometimes you gamble they are going to hit it under the wall. Free kick in a dangerous position, they scored. End of story.How on earth can Westwood be given any blame for the Iceland goal??
What goalkeeper was going to save that?
I am glad Randolph agrees with me because he wouldn't have saved it either.
Last edited by TrapAPony; 30/03/2017 at 1:57 PM.
"We lost because we didn't win"- Ronaldo
As the commentator said, it was a brilliant strike by the kid.
The first comment under that You Tube video that Danny posted Ireland vs Iceland 0-1 ALL GOALS & HIGHLIGHTS,
"Highlights? how can an Irish offside be a highlight?"
As funny as that sounds to some ears, that should be the matter of concern from that game.
That was the only alleged Irish highlight
However, it wasn't even an Irish highlight, it was a highlight of good defending
Last edited by geysir; 30/03/2017 at 3:11 PM.
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