Match nearly over. Have to say that is a surprising result
Printable View
Match nearly over. Have to say that is a surprising result
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1:eek:
By the way we are playing tonight we need Cyprus to be as bad as possible
Why is it suprising?Cyprus defence is awfull.
Loads of people on here overrate Cyprus because they beat us badly one timeQuote:
Originally Posted by Montenegrin
But 6-1 to albania lads is shocking
You are right.6-1 is disaster.
We beat Wales 2-1.
Well I suppose they wil be relieved they have an easy game coming up :D
Don't let it throw us off.
The fact that they came VERY close to a result against the world champions and the fact that they pushed Bulgaria so close in Sofia makes the result above a BIG surprise IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brendan 82
We struggled really badly at home in this campaign against them too. Is that so far removed from your memory?
Where you at the game??
Cyprus have had some bad results lately, losing 2-1 at Home to Canada and now this shock result, could be an easier game than I thought it might be, but remember those games are friendlies, and not to taken too seriously.
Australia gave us a shocking 5 goal hammering and only had to score 3 to do it.
I would never rate a team on how they perform in friendlies.
Countries treat them very differently in terms of attitude etc. Didn't Stan have a great win in his first friendly as Ireland manager?
Enough said.
Not surprising at all. Albania have Lorik Cana in there team;)
people here "overrate" cyprus because they have got some very good results in international football over the last few years against a lot of very good teams apart from the ireland resultQuote:
Originally Posted by Brendan 82
You mean the World Champs who couldn't beat us on their own patch? A team who were made look crap against Australia last night.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dublincelt67
Did you watch that game? I did. Two very poor sides in a dull match. Bulgaria won comfortably enough in the end.Quote:
and the fact that they pushed Bulgaria so close in Sofia makes the result above a BIG surprise IMO.
We struggled against them because we are not very good. That doesn't mean they aren't garbage who can't lose big to an eastern European team.Quote:
We struggled really badly at home in this campaign against them too. Is that so far removed from your memory?
Think it was at Croke park but Im not sure because of my memory loss problemsQuote:
Where you at the game?
So by default Australia must be better than Italy:confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Brendan 82
Yes but Albania aren't very good either, that's what's makes it such a surprising result. I don't think anybody would have taken much notice if it was Spain that beat them 6-1Quote:
Originally Posted by Brendan 82
lads spain only beat macedonia 3-2. think they were 2-0 down at one stage. 9 times out of 10 australia wouldnt be leaving ireland with a 3 nil win. we just need to learn from it.
Absolutely! Like remember when we beat Italy in 94 and Brazil couldn't beat them in regular time in the final. That means that we were clearly the best team in the world! And only Robbie Keane and Ronaldo scored against Oliver Kahn in the 02 WC; therefore him and Ronaldo were the 2 best strikers in the world, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by DeLorean
Check it out; I was only pointing out that getting marginally beaten by Italy at home is no sign of quality. If we were to look at all of the teams that were pipped at the post at home to Italy in a qualification match we would probably have to mention every bloody team in the whole of Europe!
True but if you were to look at all the matches Albania won by 5 goals or more I'd say the list would be pretty small. It was a very strange and unexpected scoreline and on top of the home defeat to Canada I wonder has the Cyprus bubble burst a little bit. In fairness they had clearly become more competitive the last couple of years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brendan 82
Not to mention the fact that two of their key players will be missing in our game, Okkas and Constantinou.Quote:
Originally Posted by DeLorean
Despite what we think, Cyprus are not a good team. They are ok but i think we have put them on a pedestal because of the mauling we got by them in Nicosia, and our last three performances excluding that match against this opposition. They are still a team that we should always always expect to 6 points against. When we played them in Nicosia during out 5-2 match, i was utterly shocked at how much more physically strong they were compared to us
As Napolean is often quoted "Give me a lucky General anytime":)Quote:
Originally Posted by elroy
Perhaps we will be beneficiaries because Trap is a man of destiny.
Did they play against Albania?Quote:
Originally Posted by elroy
Yes, they did
August Satsias (46 'Ch. Michael), Charalambous, P. Christou, M. Elia (77' C. Panagi) M. Nicholas (59 'Marangos), Charalambidis, Okkas, Konstantinou (46' Christofi) Alonefti (56 'Alexander), Abraham (46' Garpozis)
I really don't think anybody has them on a pedestal and I'm sure everybody in Ireland would consider anything less than 6pts against them a failure. That said they have obviosly improved a bit the last couple of yrs and there's no point in ignoring that. The fact that they've given us more than a game the last 4 times we've played them has opened our eyes even more. But yes anything less than 3pts in Nicosia would be rightly seen as a disaster, especially under the circumstances.Quote:
Originally Posted by carloz
is this true ? why will they be missing.Quote:
Originally Posted by elroy
suspended, both picked up their second bookings of the campaign in their last game against Montenegro: http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/prelimi...112/index.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by Duggie
Thats great news for us. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Going through the bookings, Okkas only has 1 booking from the 4 games he has played, Konstantinou and Makridis are suspended.
Its not just the the time we got molested 5-2 by them but the other 3 times which were all home games were extremely tight, we were lucky to beat them 1-0 under Kerr, Finnan saved us another defeat under Stan and in the last game we were saved by a terrible ref. I wouldn't say anything other than a win in Nicosia would be a major shock, my money is on a draw, hope I'm proved wrong and we hammer them but I doubt it.
i actually think we will eek out a win there.
That was away but you're right we were very lucky that evening. Given even made a rare penalty save.Quote:
Originally Posted by Morbo
Just reading through a few forums, apparently the ref for the Albania game was Turkish, needless to say Cypriots not happy!!
Apparently gave Albania a dodge peno
What about the other five goals?
LOL the match should've ended like 10-1 for Albania man.. cyprus barely ever touched the ball. They were lucky Albania's coach decided to bring in the C team in the 2nd half..;)Quote:
Originally Posted by elroy
Albania is crap but never seen a worst team than Cyprus
of yeah.. what the fvck am I doing in this forum? I have no idea
Ireland have the knack of making Cyprus look good.
Sometimes football is not as straightforward as "this team is better than this team," but rather, "this team is good against this type of team."
Think of it like a game of rock-paper-scissors: teams with certain attributes can more readily beat teams of a certain type, but may lose to a perceived better team of a different type.
Cyprus are big, powerful, and athletic, and they simply overran us last campaign because we lacked structure, a coherent midfield, and any steel in midfield.
The likes of Andrews and Whelan, for all their limitations, should be tailor made to deal with the athleticism of Cyprus.
Very good post irishfan. Reminds me of Gaelic Football where Kerry hammer Mayo, Mayo do really well against Tyrone and Kerry struggle big time against Tyrone. Different strengths and weaknesses exposed. Don't really agree with the last bit though as Whelan was part of a midfield that struggled in a big way at Croke Park against Cyprus, might be different away though.
a draw is not an absolute disaster. assuming bulgaria get nine points (beat georgia and montenegro at home and cyprus away, and lose to italy) we need five points to finish above them.... draw with cyprus, draw with italy and beat montenegro....
if however we beat cyprus, we would ideally like bulgaria to get a draw in italy but not to win.... because if bulgaria beat italy, but then we lost to italy at home, or even drew with them, we could finish third, unfathomable as it seems, were each of those two teams to win the remainder of their games.... a bulgaria win in italy is actually probably the worst result for us, strange as that sounds.
now: italy 6 / 14, ireland 7 / 13, bulgaria 6 / 8, so if bulgaria won all their games they would have 20 points (and most likely a superior goal difference), if the italians lost to bulgaria, drew against us and won the other two, they would have 21, and even if we beat cyprus and montenegro and drew with italy we would have 20.... although strangely if you switch the italian results to a loss to us and a draw with bulgaria, we win the group on 22, to the italian 21 and the bulgarian 18.
in short, and its really not where i started this post, our final position in this group is going to be decided as much by the outcome of that one game as by any of our own: if italy win, we are looking quite good for second but miles from first, if italy draw, first is a distinct possibility with second pretty secure, but if bulgaria win, first would depend on us beating the italians and third would be distinctly likely if we didn't.
all in all, there is a long way to go and the cyprus game is almost not as important as one we won't even play, four days later.
p.s. will rte be showing that game?