Ireland v Germany & Poland

[tricky_colour]

So you have just beaten the world champions, what changes do you make?

[Stuttgart88]

Lads, I think we need to take stock a bit, this is pretty much the same 11 that played for the last few years, between trap and oneill.
We were never world beaters back then, supposedly, but we definitely had a better sum of our parts as O'Neill has shown in this game. However we can't play every game like that, it works when the worlds best have an off day and we play to our optimum ability.

We have a decent group of players, and in my opinion always have had, we just didnt have the belief, and going on thursday the nous to go about holding out or achieving that. But we can't expect to always play like this, or always have things go our way.

For Poland, we need to have the same level of concentration but we have to score. I would look to make us more attack minded, but we will actually need to create chances, we had 33% or so the last day(ive seen two different percentages) of possession, and we created nothing bar that chance Long took, that will not be good enough again, as we have seen Long more often than not does not finish these type of chances. So with that in mind we need a different lineup, a more attack minded formation and a more positive approach going forward, but we also need to handle Lewandowski, 21 goals so far, Germany don't have an out and out striker like that. And if we play higher up the line and more positive then it will be difficult to keep him quite, its ok when you play the way we played against Germany, but we cant play like that against Poland as we have to score.

I hope we don't come back down to reality with a bang on Sunday.

on another night we'd have lost that game 3-0 and had no complaints. Good results breed confidence though and there is less downside than usual if we lose so I'd expect a confident performance.

My worry is that O'Neill will see edging out a nail biting 1-0 is the best approach whereas I think we should go out to score. We should look at this game as "just get two goals, it doesn't matter so much if we concede two".

Apart from a win against Germany that was every bit as smash and grab as ours was and a comprehensive win in Georgia, they haven't done much to warrant undue fear. Scotland nearly beat them twice by getting at them, and we gifted them a goal start in Dublin. Lewandowski can score if he wants but we need to be adventurous.

I hope Thursday gives them the self belief that has been lacking for the best part of a decade. The players are not as bad as many have been making out.

[geysir]

O'Neill does not have a score one and defend the lead approach.

[Stuttgart88]

No, but he does often have a defend 0-0 and hope to nick one approach

[geysir]

Stutts, under pressure you are dallying with a glass half full Maybe against Scotland away he was overly apprehensive where he would have taken a draw. We might not have the team to carry it off but O'Neill's tactics will be aimed to qualify in 2nd place and if we keep it at 0-0 going in at ht - that's a good position. This isn't a group game any more, it's a one off game.