Martin O'Neill and Roy Keane

I see what sammy is trying to say but I disagree, at least to the extent that we are reading too much into the NL campaign. As I see things O'Neill has failed to learn anything from this year long window of opportunity to assess new players. The dogs on the street can see that Stevens brings more balance on the left than McLean. Hendrick's best asset is arriving late, not being positioned high up the pitch. Hourihane was started as a deep lying holding midfielder in Cardiff, Arter the same in Dublin. He is playing players in roles that don't suit their attributes. The team lacks balance and lacks players whose skills complement each other. He publicly lacks confidence in the players. He fails to prepare - Gary Breen said on OTB that he hears from inside the squad they don't work on set pieces at either end - and quite frankly I fail to see any sign that this management team is on top of its brief. If he thinks we're limited then WTF does he not focus on set pieces? They were worth a goal a game to England in the World scup simply due to Harry Maguire FFS.

There have been occasional glimpses of improvement after every setback but nothing approaching what might convince you there is better to come. He still makes things up on the hoof and his reaction to going behind is just to pile on some extra forwards.

Martin O'Neill might have done a great job replacing Stan, but not now. In football you need to be the right man for the right team at the right time.i think it's really hard to argue he's the right man for us at this time.

I didn't realise that at the time of the contract extension, the little detail that O'Neill needed to be fixed before finally signing the papers was an extra Eur700,000 a year, a sweetener for turning down the Stoke job.

do you have a link for that geysir? I don't remember it from when the contract was announced

The only thing that was reported at the time was that the contract remained unsigned for ages and some small detail needed to be sorted out. The info about the salary hike came from Paul Rowan’s article in the sunday times. He has made this claim numerous occasions and the FAI have not denied it. O´Neill must have been on 1.2m before the contract extension.

But what do. you make out of this in the IT from march2018?
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soc...ries-1.3421468

I'm not doubting the increase, just that the reason behind it was turning down the Stoke job.

More than a coincidence though? I haven’t read Rowan’s article this sunday where he mentions it again, but he’s the source that the price hike was a reward/incentive for turning down the stoke job.

You’d wonder if the almost 100% pay rise was agreed upon before O’Brien made it known that he was cutting off his support?

Fair play to Coleman for standing up to Andrews. A couple of days after the match I’d wrote a fairly lengthy post on my phone but it got wiped and I couldn’t summon the strength to retype it all out. One of my points was the likes of Andrews digging out the current team - this was a guy who was arguably part of the worst CM Irish partnership of all time!! The way he goes on you’d think he was a strutting Pirlo in his prime and not a negative pass the ball backwards merchant.

Coleman is another name added to the list who have supported MO’N in recent weeks. I’ve read a lot of nonsense about him losing the dressing room but that is clearly not the case.

I admit it has been **** the last few weeks but journalists/supporters making stuff up is not on. The stuff about Rice was also bang out of line.

I’m undecided on MO’N right now. I was firmly in the anti-Trap campaign towards the end and if results don’t improve then maybe it is time to move on. HOWEVER management changes will not fix the problem, it’s just sticking a plaster over a gaping wound. We need better players and we need better coaches. There is no quick fix. Pep Guardiola wouldn’t turn Keogh and Arter into ball players overnight. I’ll be more optimistic if we can get Rice back into the fold. He would make a massive difference in the pivot position instead of Arter. Fingers crossed.

I disagree with most of that - Rice immediately making things better is the bit I agree with! And yes, a management change is no guarantee of improvement but I don't see O'Neill doing his job any better in the next 12 months, though I accept he may have better players to choose from.

Andrews is perfectly within his rights to criticise if he sees fit. It doesn’t matter if he was any good or not. Personally I think his observations are interesting and useful and have thought so long before he became critical of O’Neill.

Yeah it’d be great to have better players but O’Neill isn’t even close to getting the best out of what he has. He puts them down in public, ignores clear evidence of players’ ability in friendlies, puts round legs in square holes, publicly admits to lack of preparation and his reactive substitutions usually make us worse not better. In my opinion he has really wasted the last 12 months which was a great opportunity to try and learn things.

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Originally Posted by shakermaker1982

One of my points was the likes of Andrews digging out the current team - this was a guy who was arguably part of the worst CM Irish partnership of all time!! The way he goes on you’d think he was a strutting Pirlo in his prime and not a negative pass the ball backwards merchant.

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I don't think that's a fair representation of Andrews at all. I can't be the only one who remembers him and Whelan getting the better of a Pirlo-led midfield in the 2-2 at Croke Park.

That definitely DID NOT happen.

I thought maybe I was going mad so i went into the old match thread...I gave Andrews a 6. We had posters raving about how good Pirlo was that night.

Is MON perfect? Not by any means. I agree he has made some very dodgy selection choices in recent matches so he is on thin ice but I still think he has enough credit in the bank to get another shot at Denmark/the North next month.

If we get Coleman, Brady, McCarthy and Rice back all in the starting 11 at some point in the future I think we’d see a change in fortune.

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Originally Posted by shakermaker1982

That definitely DID NOT happen.

I thought maybe I was going mad so i went into the old match thread...I gave Andrews a 6. We had posters raving about how good Pirlo was that night.

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Andrews was the Christie of his day - he was never getting more than a 6 no matter how he played. Fact is we were winning that game until a brainfart at the end having been the better team. Italians were raving about Andrews.

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Originally Posted by shakermaker1982

Is MON perfect? Not by any means. I agree he has made some very dodgy selection choices in recent matches so he is on thin ice but I still think he has enough credit in the bank to get another shot at Denmark/the North next month.

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That’s not credit in the bank, that’s a limited, one month only, overdraft extension.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Martin O'Neill might have done a great job replacing Stan, but not now. In football you need to be the right man for the right team at the right time.i think it's really hard to argue he's the right man for us at this time.

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I think he did a good job replacing Trap, as his first campaign has to be considered a resounding success even if it took a while to get going. Actually the run of results leading up to that campaign wasn't too dissimilar to what we're going through at the moment. Before the gimme against Oman in advance of the first qualifier in Tbilisi, our record was:
P 6 W 0 D 3 L 3 F 4 A 10

It didn't seem like he was learning too much then either and perhaps the first half of the campaign indicated the same. He eventually got there though, stumbling upon a formation that suited us and it led to some of our best ever results.

I pretty much agree with all of your negatives, the big question for me is whether or not he has enough credit in the bank, as Shakermaker suggests he has, for next month's games at least but really I would extend that to the Euro qualifiers regardless of results (within reason!). Personally I think results are king and will generally outweigh the other negatives and, overall, he's achieved as much as could be reasonably expected, certainly in terms of our final standings in the groups but obviously the Denmark disaster was the first major black mark.

You can point to the disappointing home draws but the fact is we took four points from both Wales and Austria, so they had bigger questions to answer than we did, especially with the quality of players they have by comparison. We can rightly give out about O'Neill constantly bemoaning his lack of top quality players, but the fact is we don't have a Bale, Ramsey, Alaba or Arnautovic. We all know what a difference this kind of quality can make, yet we outperformed both countries and jumped from fourth to second in terms of the original seeding places. Can that really be seen as anything other than an overachievement?


As for Keith Andrews, I've no problem with either side on this. Andrews talks a lot of sense and if he never kicked a ball in his life, he's still entitled to give his opinion. The fact that he has a regular slot on OTB means we're probably hearing more from him than most too. On the flip side though, I can understand why Coleman would find it grating, the negativity isn't helpful to their cause and the fact that Andrews was a key part of a squad that had similar deficiencies was always going to be thrown at him, he even anticipated this himself in one of his OTB previews.

I would take issue with Coleman following O'Neill's lead in isolating our Championship players as a reason for our poor performances. That's not on for me. It's bad enough O'Neill saying it but even worse hearing it from their teammate and so called leader. It's potentially divisive and really not helpful.

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Originally Posted by shakermaker1982

I admit it has been **** the last few weeks but journalists/supporters making stuff up is not on. The stuff about Rice was also bang out of line.

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I'm hugely supportive of this view.

He got us qualified in 2016, and we even got out of the group.

For the 2018 WC, we got to the playoffs ahead of Austria and Wales.

I don't think you could say he was underachieving at that point. There were some poor games and performances for sure, and the playoff itself was a disaster, but the campaign was hardly a failure. Could we really have expected more from that group?

So up to this point, I'd say it has been ugly to watch a lot of the times, but the results have been reasonable. Certainly I think he is over-defensive, but I'll not get into that again.

Right now though, things are looking a bit like Trap's last campaign....wheels coming off a bit. He doesn't look like he is getting the best out of his players, and that doesn't look like changing either.

But the Nations League is too few games, so I'd say he still deserves the Euro qualifiers. Once we know what the groups are, we will have a better idea about what an acceptable campaign would be, considering our players and the other teams in the group.

The other question to be asked though is whether somebody else could achieve that acceptable campaign for less money than the two of them are on.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

Andrews was the Christie of his day - he was never getting more than a 6 no matter how he played. Fact is we were winning that game until a brainfart at the end having been the better team. Italians were raving about Andrews.

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You’re sellig Keith short, wasn’t he awarded poty one year? Not just a dapper dan.

Paul Green was the Christie of his day.

That’s what Owls Fan said!

Anyway, did we not make a play off by virtue of finishing 3rd and also the last 16 by virtue of finishing 3rd? Sure, the rules are the rules but by similar standards we should be heaping more praise on Hand, Jack, Mick and Kerr (though I think Kerr’s best was 4th so maybe scratch that :)).

I’m not being a curmudgeon but outqualifying Scotland and Wales was the big achievement here. Not to be scoffed at but that’s the high point!

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

That’s what Owls Fan said!

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Maybe that's why it came to mind so quickly. Anyway, it's a far better comparison I think.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

I’m not being a curmudgeon but outqualifying Scotland and Wales was the big achievement here. Not to be scoffed at but that’s the high point!

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A Scotland side you were borderline in awe of for a while (in comparison to ourselves)?

It's unquestionably the best Welsh side ever too, European semi finalists. I think finishing ahead of them with what is generally perceived as one of our worst group of players in decades is a big enough achievement.

Germany and Poland were better than us. Finishing third in that group meets the minimum requirement. Beating Bosnia in the playoff exceeds the minimum requirement. Making the knockouts of the tournament itself is pretty much dreamland. Yes, third place finishes being rewarded was clearly a major advantage for O'Neill over previous managers, but I wasn't comparing him to previous managers. If I was I could argue the point that they generally had much better players anyway.

We also outperformed/outqualified Bosnia, Austria and Sweden along the way too.

The major high points were the wins over Germany & Italy, along with wins in Vienna and Cardiff and obviously beating Bosnia to secure qualification. You could throw in the late equaliser in Gelsenkirchen too. That is not a shabby list by any means over the period of two campaigns.