Coleman was certainly in no mans land for the chance that he eventually and fortunately blocked . He played the attacker onside and we were lucky .
Coleman was certainly in no mans land for the chance that he eventually and fortunately blocked . He played the attacker onside and we were lucky .
No, I don't think he did.Quote:
Originally Posted by geysir
Brady, Whelan, Hendrick and Ward all got booked, that's going to come back to haunt us
Does anyone know where I can get a video of the match? I missed it on Monday and would like to be able to go back and watch it now. I live in the USA if that makes any difference. Ta
In fairness, I don't think Coleman could have got forward quick enough to play the attacker offside from his starting position, dropping back to the line was proven to be the right call. Touch of no man's land for the starting position alright.Quote:
Originally Posted by seanfhear
Is it three you need to accumulate for a suspension these days? Brady & Hendrick have become key players for sure. I wouldn't be too concerned about the other two (despite Ward being very good the other night) barring an injury crisis.Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Ward was booked for a decent robust challenge . It probably wasn't even a foul . Those kind of tackles are part of the game .
He went in though with the studs showing. I can see why it was a foul.
I watched the game again last night, and we thought it was innocuous enough at the time, however, 9 times out of 10 those are given as penalties, the player played the ball in front of him, well in front of him, walters was too slow to get in front of him and came across him, behind him, and gets contact with him. The ref sees him go down and walters is standing between the ref and the player. Its a completely stupid piece of covering/defending, but it was a dangerous enough position potentially from which he could have done something. It reminds me in gaelic football when a forward holds and locks in the defenders arm, making it looking like he is being held, and then falls over - refs always fall for that too. There was contact for sure, whether its the kind of contact given in Geysirs definition I am not sure.
Coleman was very poor last night, I hope its injury and fitness rather than anything else, his defending hasn't been as good as it used to and he didn't get forward much the last day, he was also doing a ward all night long and they were hogging the touchline getting attack after attack, thankfully their crossing was as bad as ours and they rarely beat the first man.
McClean and Long are much better impact subs, had we brought on hoolahan, long and mcclean with 25 or 30 to go I think we would have sneaked another one. I am happy enough about when the penalty came they were going to score anyway and we had ample time to get a reply.
On or around the 37th minute I think, we had won a corner, I turned to the lads with me and asked why do we always do this when leading, the easy option was taken from McClean to just look for the corner(low ball hit against the first defender) and waste a bit more time and maybe we get something from the corner, it was the simple and negative option and it really annoyed me as it's something we always do. There were 3 lads in the box and McClean should have gone for the good ball beating the defender with a bit of height in it. There was a really good chance we could have scored from that with a decent ball, especially given how poor they were defensively and how bad their marking was. I was glad to hear Houghton say the exact same and that McClean has to be positive there, put height in it and beat the first man. O'Neill and the players themselves need to look back on these things and remedy them, drum it into them that in these positions we need to attack and take the chance, be positive, go for it, don't settle for the simple, lets take a corner negative approach.
There are many little simple things that we can do when leading, that all applied together during the course of a match that would make a big difference. O'Neill must see this and start to implement a fix for it.
it's two according to this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_F...p_D#DisciplineQuote:
Originally Posted by DeLorean
Definitely going to haunt usQuote:
Receiving two yellow cards in two different matches (yellow card suspensions are carried forward to the play-offs, but not the finals or any other future international matches)
Might be better off picking them up in the next game and sitting out Moldova!
I think the problem Coleman alludes too, ie sitting back after going a goal ahead is a common one.Quote:
Originally Posted by DeLorean
Indeed I seem to remember one of the Serbian players saying the exact same thing about Serbia when they went ahead.
It seems the problem is easy to diagnose but it is rather harder putting the solution into practise.
I think is the fear of losing which is the problem, if you are already losing you don't have so much to worry about!!!
As for Long were the tables reversed, he would have won us a penalty in the same situation, indeed I am pretty sure he has already.
Well put and I agree it's pretty common across the board, especially when a team is playing against opposition of similar or higher quality (particularly away from home). We did okay for the rest of the first half against France having gone 1-0 up after a couple of minutes, but were pinned back in the second half for a variety of reasons. It's not as if we just collapsed into our shell after taking the lead though. Sweden came on pretty strong after we scored alright but we were never going to dominate for ninety minutes I don't think. We picked B&H off pretty well at Lansdowne having gone 1-0 up relatively early on.Quote:
Originally Posted by tricky_colour
I am not sure why you think that our best hope is a play off position. I think we have as good a chance of securing the top spot as any of the other main contenders. Not long ago we scoffed at winning the Celtic Cup or whatever it was called against opposition such as Wales. Now we seem to fear them. We are equal to if not better than them (Bale aside). Serbia we have a nudge on after the away draw and Austria. We were better than them at home and they outplayed us away in the last campaign under Trap when the team was starting to implode. I would be equally hopeful as the other nations are of a top spot. Certainly not looking at a play off spot at this stage.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
Thus I don't think it is time "to blood new players" for the future. Pick your best team and if the new players are better than what's there, play them but not as an experiment for some future campaign. World Cups come around only every 4 years and are precious and should never be written off until mathematically impossible to qualify. Then you blood new players but not before.
Bale is a quality player but I would expect there to be very little room for quality play in either game against Wales. Both games are going to be like FA Cup matches. Hardly any time on the ball, and even less quality on show. Maybe late on when legs start to give out there might be a bit of space for him to do something but with the way he plays for Wales his legs will be likely to be as far gone as anyone else
Ah we're not though. Are we really one (world class) player away from a European semi-final? Not a hope.Quote:
Originally Posted by OwlsFan
Wales have flown past us in terms of skill and confidence.
Well we weren't exactly a million miles from a quarter final against Iceland, throw a Bale into the equation and he could easily have made the difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Although I don't see the point in saying "Bale aside" - you can't just take him out of the equation when he's the most important part of the equation. Plus I'm not sure we've anybody playing at the level Williams, Allen & Ramsey have produced in recent months either - so that's four players they have that are automatically better than any of ours, one of which is on another planet.
I agree with everybody to a point-
I agree with SkStu that we should be bringing new players in for the likes of McShane and Pearce, nothing to lose there. I'd stop short of mass changes for change sake though. We do need to freshen things up a bit and reward players who deserve to be selected.
I agree with Owls that the World Cup qualification campaign shouldn't be jeopardised in the hope of future gain. That might be okay if we have no realistic chance of qualifying, like Toshack & Wales seemed to do at one point, but this is a dream group in a lot of ways.
I agree with Stu-eile that Wales have definitely passed us out since the Nations Cup. It's not that they managed to get to the Euros semi final a such, but more the manner in which they hammered the likes of Russia and Belgium, stuff we could only dream of, despite my comment above. Austria's qualification campaign was seriously impressive last time as well, regardless of the demise of Russia and Sweden. They were still results we never could and probably never will be capable of producing.
Backstothewall - it's an interesting point about Bale's quality not showing if the games are tight. I think the opposite in a lot of ways but I know what you're saying too. He was totally out of the game against Northern Ireland in the Euros because of their defensive setup, but he still produced the one moment of quality that made the difference and has done that countless times for club and country. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a quality player perform so poor so often, but still come up with something when it's really matters.
But we are realistically capable of getting results off everybody in this group, which is something we didn't fully believe last time (even though it ended up happening). I wouldn't rule out top spot yet either, but I would snap your hand off for a playoff place if it was offered.
I think anything can happen in this group too, but I think we need to pull our socks up. IRL v WAL could be a slugfest like Glasgow where we bring a more technical team down to our level.
I think we're deluded if we think we can play to the standard that Wales played at key times during the Euros. Look at our respective performances versus Belgium. What would we have done with an early lead against Russia, who were poor but surely better than Serbia?
Bale, Allen and Ramsey all played to a very high level last summer and all the rest did their jobs well too.
But the argument isn't so much to play nice football, it's to simply not give up initiative and retreat every time we have something to defend.
Being able to pass the ball to each other would help on both counts but Dunne is saying that it's easy to talk, but a different thing when you look up and it's just a sea of red shirts in front of you. Obviously the opposition are going to come on stronger when they're losing too and make it even tougher for us to play football/not retreat. Regardless, there was no excuse for some of the hoofing the last night, the worst I have seen I think.