Albania

[pineapple stu]

Anybody else really p!ssed off with the antics of the Albanian players to-day? Surely UEFA have to do something about this ridiculous rolling around and refusing to leave the pitch for an age? Their keeper was down for at least four minutes, and yet there was only five minutes injury time (with six subs)!

The referee did what he could - couldn't book them 'cos they weren't diving, but he did make them wait a good bit before letting them back on. Was delighted when we stopped giving them the ball back after they put it out of touch - exactly what they deserved! And then their manager had the cheek to complain about our fair play!!!

One incident stood out though - one of their players went down after a tackle (no, really - an actual tackle!), but Albania won the ball back and after another couple of crunching tackles, they won a throw. Igli Tare then grabbed Matt Holland by the collar and pointed at their player still on the ground! Don't know what he expected us to do seeing as we didn't have the ball to put it out!

It's great to see "lesser" nations like Albania making the progress they have been, but their antics were disgraceful, and something has to be done.

[Bosco]

The rolling ****ed me off but in all fairness the keeper was injured.You could tell cos he wasn't moving wen he went down but it took far too long for him to move.The Albanian antics were forgotten though around the 92nd minute when all i could think about was jumping around.
It was a very poor performance and we were all lucky to get a win but if anyone was goin to win it should be us.Gary Doc was very impressive wen he came on.Reid was a little dissapointing do.

[BlackEagle]

Personally I think there was nothing to be p!ssed off at the way they went down. As Bosco said the keeper was badly injured, and there's a logic to why a keeper can't be moved out of the pitch and the referee can't carry on with the game. As for the other cases (they were 2 in total), I think when u play not a home game, you have a good result to date (1-1), the best thing to do is keep up with that, be defensive and get a draw out of it (i.e. remember Ireland draw in Tirana). So a bit of "drama" is something albanians didn't invent. We've seen a lot of that so far. I better engage UEFA to have a good word with the referee for not giving the penalty when Tare shot Carr's arm ;)
I think a draw would have been a fair result, but we all know that at the end of the day what it counts are the balls in the net.
I hope the boys in green will do better in the next matches specially Switzerland and Russia. If they will play the same way I don't think angels will be there every time.....

[pineapple stu]

Black Eagle, you can't defend what the Albanians were doing just because they were the away team and wanted a draw. They cleared their lines and then one player would go down injured so they could knock the ball out and then get it back from the throw - pressure relieved. That's a joke.

I was very surprised when they took their keeper off - don't know how he could have been injured, but he must have been. But in the first half, he was at it as well when Robbie Keane fell over him and he was down for a couple of minutes. But what really gets to me is their manager complaining about our lack of sportsmanship!

Didn't see the penalty incident clearly at the match, although on the replay, you could make a case that Carr's hand was just there and the ball hit it - he certainly couldn't have taken it out of the way anyway. Thought we had a claim in the first half as well - one of the Albanians appeared to put his arm across Keane's chest as he went by.

But sure, a win is a win, I suppose.:)

[brine2]

What about Duff's penalty claim. :D

[Estar]

Glad we don't have to play the albino time wasters again. If we play more direct football we should win on Wednesday night. If he plays connolly and kilbane I'm sure we will lose:(

[techs]

Wait a Minute!!!!
What about our goal in the 92nd minute?
They put the ball out of play and we didnt give it back to them and it led to the goal.
Now don't tell me that if it was vice versa we wouldn't be here giving out stink, what about Fair Play and all that.
We robbed the albanians in truth..

[parnell ranger]

i agree techs,but aside from the fair play bit,our approach play was awful,no direction,no leadership and no width.
It has to be 4-4-2 with duff playing wide on the left from here on in.

[gspain]

I thought we were very lucky. Albania passed the ball better and deserved a draw. Still we were done ourselves a few times late on especially in Macedonia.

We need to play better on wednesday. We won't get that lucky again.

We need Duffer fit but can't depend on him as much again.

[Macy]

Originally posted by techs
Wait a Minute!!!!
What about our goal in the 92nd minute?
They put the ball out of play and we didnt give it back to them and it led to the goal.
Now don't tell me that if it was vice versa we wouldn't be here giving out stink, what about Fair Play and all that.
We robbed the albanians in truth..
Possibly, but then I would be a bit rich for us to do so if we had been playing dead during every passage of play.... We have players that can be as "professional" as any other team, but Albania surely went to an extreme....

btw Was he actually injured, or did he go down for a few minutes and then get up no bother?

[pineapple stu]

Originally posted by techs
Wait a Minute!!!!
What about our goal in the 92nd minute?
They put the ball out of play and we didnt give it back to them and it led to the goal.
Now don't tell me that if it was vice versa we wouldn't be here giving out stink, what about Fair Play and all that.
We robbed the albanians in truth..

Techs - that's the whole thing I'm getting at. The Albanians, it could easily be argued, blatantly abused that rule by having a player go down injured every time they cleared the ball. They would then waste time, get the ball back AND be guaranteed to clear their lines fully. In view of this blatant abuse of Fair Play, they didn't deserve to get the ball back. And that's what Fair Play means anyway - getting what you deserve, even if the strict interpretation of the rules dictate otherwise.

Of course we'd have given out stink if it'd happened to us, but then we wouldn't have been lying around playing dead in the first place!

The Albanians' time-wasting and faking injury was a disgrace, and they got exactly what they deserved.

[pineapple stu]

Originally posted by Macy
btw Was he actually injured, or did he go down for a few minutes and then get up no bother?

All their players bar the goalkeeper were grand to play on anyway, so it couldn't have been anything worse than a little knock.

Even the referee saw what was happening and made the Albanians wait on the touchline for a while before letting them back on.

There was a bit in the Irish Times to-day about how there was a drop ball which the Albanians should have given back to us under the Fair Play law, but instead they contested fully - it was one of our players was pointing that out.