Scotland v Republic of Ireland - Saturday, 24th September 2022 - UEFA Nations League

[Bielsa´s irish]

for me Kenny is having injury time in his role as manager of Ireland football team

[TonyD]

How come certain lads only come out of the woodwork when Ireland lose ? Not a sign of them in June.

[Insidetherock]

Thinking about this discussion reminds me of the saxophone lad in the Commitments, when he was in the dole office..

He said he'd rather be an unemployed musician than an unemployed pipe fitter

Yeah, we're losing.. but playing half decent football and trying to win with a better brand

We could still be picking journeymen and losing while playing pure muck

These young lads will be the backbone of Irish football for the next decade.. give them their head now

I don't think any other manager bar Kenny would have the guts to do it

Bring on the Euros and get behind him and the team

[Bielsa´s irish]

It is gonna be 30 matches. It was Slovakia , then those matches with Finland etc, then port and Serbia , now Ukraine Scotland.....4 qualies , if you want to 3 and a play off...it took much....joy. ......get him out after Armenia

[BOOMSHAKALAKA]

In my time watching Ireland matches, some of the most miserable performances I've seen have been under Kenny. Luxembourg, Azerbaijan, 2 games v Bulgaria, Wales, Armenia, the list goes on. Yet there's this myth that Kenny's Ireland are the entertainers. Remember there was a long spell where we couldn't even score a goal!

[geysir]

Avoid Georgia.. just cause they are Georgia.. from Pot 4 .. maybe Turkey too
Avoid Turkey yes, but Georgia have done us many favors.
Regardless, it's good to have a team in pot 4 that will trip-up at least one of the top seeds.

[Neish]

For me Marcelo Bielsa is the answer, maybe Gerry Martino i leaves Mexico.
I would love Hiddink, but he has retired

Seriously the guy who has one mode attack, which worked well; in the Championship were Leeds could offer competitive wages for the level, but was quickly found out to be lacking other ideas once he came up against strong opposition & would be under constant pressure in the EPL

[Insidetherock]

Argghh France heading into Pot 2 as well.. 5/1 chance of getting a top seed plus England or France..

[liamoo11]

I think talk of getting rid of Kenny just smacks of the short termism that riddles EPL football and gives fans of clubs there misguided notions about how to be successful.
I think Kenny should be given the Euro qualifiers to see how we get on. As 3rd seeds in a group it will mean overcoming a higher seed to at least get into a play off, but looking at some of the higher seeds and they're not especially frightening - scotland, for example are absolute pish.
Patience is a virtue for this manager I believe. The players are clearly enjoying playing his way of football anyway.

This is fair I think. If we don't make the euro s then I think he will have been treated extremely fairly and it will be time for a change. In that situation using the excuse that we were third seeds would not be acceptable as the poor results of his reign to date has resulted in us been third seeds

[John83]

Dan McDonald's piece on the Scotland game echos a lot of the points here.
https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/international-soccer/another-nations-league-loss-raises-questions-about-irelands-composure-in-tight-games-42015737.html

My own take is that it doesn't really move the dial for me. Losing narrowly to Scotland away is more or less par. I remain dubious about Kenny based on his overall record, and if things have been a bit better in the past year, they could hardly have gotten worse.

One talking point I haven't seen anywhere: do we concede that ****e equaliser if Duffy is on the pitch?

[ifk101]

The equaliser is on Doherty - who looks dehydrated or overtrained to me, something is off there.

On the game itself, we played ok - we had a clear game plan and were executing it well. But individual slip-ups cost us. Maybe we could have held onto the ball a bit more, exploited our aerial advantage more, and used Ogbene's pace better a bit - but no real complaints on my part.

After 15 odd years of progressively getting worse, a fundamental cultural change was needed, and I feel we have turned a corner and are moving in the right direction with Kenny. But we have had a string of poor results under his tenure and one more with relegation to a team getting hockeyed by everyone else would be hard to defend.

[Jd2793]

bielsa wasnt really found lacking. leeds hadnt enough squad depth, couldnt deal with injuries to key players. all nonsense talk anyway cant see how fai would ever coax him into it.

[Jd2793]

counter point do we play our way out of the back as well as we did throughout the game if hes on instead of oshea? i think the answer is no. duffys time as a starter is up imo

[Stuttgart88]

The equaliser is on Doherty - who looks dehydrated or overtrained to me, something is off there.

On the game itself, we played ok - we had a clear game plan and were executing it well. But individual slip-ups cost us. Maybe we could have held onto the ball a bit more, exploited our aerial advantage more, and used Ogbene's pace better a bit - but no real complaints on my part.

After 15 odd years of progressively getting worse, a fundamental cultural change was needed, and I feel we have turned a corner and are moving in the right direction with Kenny. But we have had a string of poor results under his tenure and one more with relegation to a team getting hockeyed by everyone else would be hard to defend.Conte is a fitness freak. Doc looks exceptionally lean now. I think it's more that he's just lacking match fitness/sharpness. Your decision making goes when you haven't been playing. He also went straight through the back of one guy, he got suckered into a daft challenge. I don't think he does that if he has 10 league games under his belt.

I agree with the rest of your post btw.

[elatedscum]

not entirely sure about the duffy call. i get it, we clearly played better short passing football without him - but we probably don't concede the first goal, maybe we don't give away that penalty if duffy and not egan is going for the ball there - and i saw a piece from scotland where they were highlighting how relieved they were 'considering the havoc he caused in their box at every set piece'. it's give and take, hard to know how much his lack of football was affecting him.

not entirely sure about all the subs either. even the best managers in the world make mistakes with subs, so i wouldn't be too harsh.

performance that merited a point, Bazunu had barely anything to do. if Troy puts it away, then we go on to win the game. fine margins. maybe if mcginn finished the chance in dublin to make it 1-1 (that duffy presented him) then we wouldn't have won that game. hopefully a good win against armenia to end the group

[Stuttgart88]

History is written by the winners as they say. We got the luck at key moments in Dublin, we didn't on Saturday.

I think it was right not to play Duffy. If he'd been match fit it'd have been a tougher decision to make. I think the trio that played generally did well but maybe Dykes warranted a like for like man marker.

[Trequartista20]

Doherty hasn't started a competitive match since tearing knee ligaments at the beginning of April - nearly six months ago. It was a big call to start him, an understandable one, but Doherty just didn't look quite match sharp, and that told a number of times, not least with the poor goal we conceded.

My first thought when I saw the team-sheet was that the Scots are going to be delighted that Duffy wasn't playing. Again, it was an understandable call by Kenny, but in a game where we were likely to be defending deep and under sustained pressure for periods and where set-pieces were likely to prove important, I thought he might have been worth the risk, despite his lack of game-time. And it was notable how dominant Lyndon Dykes was in the air in the second half and this caused us a number of problems.

In terms of playing out from the back, I don't think Egan and O'Shea are outstanding on the ball either, and in any case the Scots pressed us high, pinning our wingbacks back, and we were tending to hit long balls into the channels for the front two to chase a lot of the time.

I was watching the match on Premier Sports and a seemingly approving Martin O'Neill, with a wry smile, noted how direct we had been and how the goalkeeper had obviously been instructed to hit the ball long whenever he received it.

[Diggs246]

We played well but lost again!!
We have had the following four campaigns under kenny.
Nation's league(1) very poor
EURO play off (2) fail
World cup qualifying (3) disaster
Nation's league (4) very poor ( he said we would win this one btw)
He isnt good enough guys and I accept the players aren't great but I don't believe he makes smart in-game decisions. Ive found his mid game tactics and subs from day one to be at best unusual.

[Bielsa´s irish]

Yes for me Kenny must resign. After al. If The team loses tomorrow people will do the Robespierre with Kenny.

[SkStu]

I really don't know how to analyze the 2nd half performance on Saturday or how i feel about it, other than i was depressed about it all weekend and stayed away from here.

We started the 2nd half exactly the way you wouldnt want a team to start it, low on tempo and ceding territory - as we kicked off i said, ok tight 5 here - and 3 minutes later we looked in big trouble and conceded. That first goal felt inevitable and Scotland should never had got that cross in. Doherty was sold a trick and looked so leggy. But then we hit back in terms of performance and should have gone back in front, with Parrott and Ogbene. Then we invited them on again for about 15 minutes before conceding the penalty then Doherty's miss. I thought we would have a big final few but Scotland easily played keep ball as we got into injury time which was disappointing.

I think there were more positives again, the kind you'd want to see but I was so ****ed off that we lost. We just have to find a way to start winning more games but more importantly and nicking 3's and 1's instead of 1's and 0's. Kenny will get the euro campaign. And I think i am still ok with that overall but there have been some real low points that it is getting more and more difficult to ignore.

[paul_oshea]

counter point do we play our way out of the back as well as we did throughout the game if hes on instead of oshea? i think the answer is no. duffys time as a starter is up imo

So its ok to concede goals once we pass out from the back.

I dont like that strawman type of argument but its par for the course on this site so its about time I jumped on the bandwagon.

[paul_oshea]

ALl points fairly well covered on here the one thing that I commented on at the time was "I bet he was going to take off obafemia..." think he cant now. Having ogbene and obafemi up front when scotland were applying all that pressure up top for me was a no brainer, that and the fact Parrot hasnt been scoring and ogbene has. Obafemis strength, hold up and build up play was very good the last day. It was the wrong call. And that leads to my overall point is that the difference between Ireland winning and scotland winning hte last day was down to the managers. Clarke saw the problems, he fixed them at half time and Kenny was outfoxed again. That's the biggest concern now and has been consistently throughout his reign thus far. Scotland were all over us the second half(68% possession for your stats lovers), our only outlet was the counter, obafemi and ogbenes pace along with his better finishing so far this season were the two players to exploit that.

I'm always left wondering/guessing what kenny has in mind with every substitution thinking to myself, well he should know best, but im scratching my head and then wondering at the end of the game still.

[paul_oshea]

We started the 2nd half exactly the way you wouldnt want a team to start it, low on tempo and ceding territory - as we kicked off i said, ok tight 5 here - and 3 minutes later we looked in big trouble and conceded. That first goal felt inevitable and Scotland should never had got that cross in. Doherty was sold a trick and looked so leggy. But then we hit back in terms of performance and should have gone back in front, with Parrott and Ogbene. Then we invited them on again for about 15 minutes before conceding the penalty then Doherty's miss. I thought we would have a big final few but Scotland easily played keep ball as we got into injury time which was disappointing.


The sobering reality of foot.ie...

But thats either one of two things or all:
1. We tire and cant keep up the high press and all out tempo
2. Opposition figures us out and opposing players and/or manager take steps to counter our press and tempo
3. Kenny doesnt make the necessary changes to counteract 2 and/or 1.

We've seen it throughout the campaigns and thats my biggest worry anyway that we have not learned or simply kenny isnt capable of affecting (necessary) change.

[paul_oshea]

Btw has anyone seen a replay where brownes hands clearly touch the ball? At the time collins seem to say the ball went to ground(and browne)

[tetsujin1979]

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