Originally Posted by
Bungle
Hughton has serious knowledge of the game and I've no doubt he would set us up to be a well drilled team that is hard to beat. I was never against him, but as it stands I would bite my own hand off for him. He cares about Irish football and his knowledge of professional underage structures could be exactly what the FAI need in the coming years - Rovers and Bohs etc are doing great work but I mean a national co-ordinated structure. He's not as exotic as Sagnol, but he knows the score here and has an emotional attachment to us - with Sagnol if he was successful in the next two years (having us compete and maybe beat Greece/Finland etc) would he stay for 2028, which is a big campaign for the country. I'm not sure.
Right now, we are a mediocre team with potential to be a good one. We have very good goalkeepers, very talented centre halves and a very decent selection of strikers. Btw, I'm comparing us to lower 2nd seeds to higher 4th seeds in my comparison of quality. However, you look at what countries like Scotland and Hungary have and that's good midfielders. We just have to hope some of the u21s or younger age groups produce something. Mad when you think we produced players like Giles, Brady, Whelan and Keane in the past, but hopefully we produce even a good pl quality midfielder. Until we have that, having any kind of cohesion to our play is very hard. I had hoped Knight or Smallbone might be those players, but I'm not sure they'll be anything more than decent championship players.