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Whilst I am not one for defending a lead for 80 minutes I do think that in the
last 3 minutes of a game it is OK to have the majority of your players back defending.
After all you would expect the opposition to be pushing their defence forward, and those players should have been picked up.
I mean FFS at 90 minutes you would expect to see the oppositions goalkeeper in the Irish box :rolleyes:
Can't believe it.
We were really pushing players up looking for the third goal. It's a defeatist strategy - when Murphy came on for Doyle it was for two reasons: to waste time, and to keep the Slovaks honest at the back. When you've fresh legs coming on up front it keeps their centre backs from moving on up the field for the equalizer........sadly the left full seemingly had no problem getting up in our end...
We lost because of our failure to make good usage of substitutes. Three poor choices.
We didn't lose the final score was 2-2
The reason we conceded so late is because the right hand side fell asleep and John O'Shea wouldn't want to hurt himself by throwing his body in front of the ball
Oh to have a Moran or McGrath last Saturday night
We retreated way too early in this game, i dont think it was as bad as in Tel Aviv when we gave up attacking. But with 7 mins of normal time to go, we were heading for the corner flag, much too early to be doing that in my opinion. I genuinely think there is a lack of confidence in this squad and instead of doing the brave thing and continuning to attack we took the soft option and put 11 men behind the ball. Having said that the substitions were not helpful and the game was calling out for Hunt in particular. He provided a great outlet in the home game in the last 20 mins, couldnt understand why he wasnt used again. And this is the guy who has arguably had the best start to the season for an Irish player.
errr, we didnt, we drew. But my god it felt like a defeat:mad:
So late in the game throwing on a hundred Irish strikers would not have stopped their backs getting forward. They have nothing to lose at that stage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Colbert Report
They have to press forward and those players should have been picked up.
The amount of space the back had was unreal. All our players were on the left hand side of the field, he had half the pitch to himself and was not picked up.
Because we never ever learn from our mistakes.
They could have tried that other tactic of holding onto the ball and not continuously giving the initiative back to the Slovaks. But i can't remember the last time I saw an irish side manage that