Republic of Ireland V Azerbaijan - Saturday, 4th Sep 2021 - 2022 World Cup Qualifier

Lads, maybe knock off the ad hominem bullshirt and discuss the game, however painful that may be?

Yesterday just reaffirmed what I've thought since Luxembourg: Kenny's not right for this. I backed him to that point, but if you keep losing to bad teams, then you're an extremely bad team. Using elo ratings, the 15 games under Kenny have a performance rating almost exactly equal to the current rating of Bulgaria, 84th in the world. That's where Kenny has us. That's where our seeding is sliding towards.

Bad as this squad is, it's not that bad, but I don't see any coherence in how we try to attack. For all his fine talk, it was crosses from McClean and Horgan that made most of the half chances yesterday. Horgan at least seemed to have a bit of life about him.

McClean didn't look at the races. Maybe there's some caveat to that in that his preseason was interrupted by a club move, dropping a division after being told he was finished at his club. Maybe he'll be a little better next window, but I'm coming around to the idea that he's not all that. Molumby didn't look up to it. I'm a little worried about Coleman. He stood off his man for a footballing age to let him get the shot away for the goal. What was he thinking? He lost Ronaldo the other night too, and for all that I dismissed that as just a function of Ronaldo being nigh unmarkable, I'm inclined to worry that Coleman is getting old. Or, like McClean, maybe he's just off the boil. Anyway, you think about these things when you draw to a team outside the top 100 in the world. Azerbaijan are crap, so crap that we rarely play teams of that ilk: Moldova, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, ... they're better than the Andorras, the Faroes, and the Gibraltars, but that's not saying much.

Cullen remains a bright spot, as do Duffy and Egan. I wish I had more to say, but we drew with Azerbaijan. They're awful. So are we.

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Originally Posted by MylesNotMiley

Did you see the foul for Wales' second penalty?

How it was given and the barge into the back of Connolly against Portugal wasn't, I'll never know!!

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no, didn’t see.

Did you see the tv. Bolsonaro stopped Argentina vs Brasil. The want to put the team in jail

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Originally Posted by John83

Lads, maybe knock off the ad hominem bullshirt and discuss the game, however painful that may be?

Yesterday just reaffirmed what I've thought since Luxembourg: Kenny's not right for this. I backed him to that point, but if you keep losing to bad teams, then you're an extremely bad team. Using elo ratings, the 15 games under Kenny have a performance rating almost exactly equal to the current rating of Bulgaria, 84th in the world. That's where Kenny has us. That's where our seeding is sliding towards.

Bad as this squad is, it's not that bad, but I don't see any coherence in how we try to attack. For all his fine talk, it was crosses from McClean and Horgan that made most of the half chances yesterday. Horgan at least seemed to have a bit of life about him.

McClean didn't look at the races. Maybe there's some caveat to that in that his preseason was interrupted by a club move, dropping a division after being told he was finished at his club. Maybe he'll be a little better next window, but I'm coming around to the idea that he's not all that. Molumby didn't look up to it. I'm a little worried about Coleman. He stood off his man for a footballing age to let him get the shot away for the goal. What was he thinking? He lost Ronaldo the other night too, and for all that I dismissed that as just a function of Ronaldo being nigh unmarkable, I'm inclined to worry that Coleman is getting old. Or, like McClean, maybe he's just off the boil. Anyway, you think about these things when you draw to a team outside the top 100 in the world. Azerbaijan are crap, so crap that we rarely play teams of that ilk: Moldova, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, ... they're better than the Andorras, the Faroes, and the Gibraltars, but that's not saying much.

Cullen remains a bright spot, as do Duffy and Egan. I wish I had more to say, but we drew with Azerbaijan. They're awful. So are we.

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Coleman's injured so maybe that had something to do with it. But ya agreed generally and about him losing Ronaldo too. I'm very worried no matter how good we get , if it even happened which is the main reason for keeping Kenny on, we'll struggle to get up the seedings and just be out of contention because too many "good " teams above us.

Good being the likes of Austria , Norway's etc. Not that good but a level or two above us under Kenny

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Originally Posted by John83

Using elo ratings, the 15 games under Kenny have a performance rating almost exactly equal to the current rating of Bulgaria, 84th in the world.

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Belarus, not Bulgaria

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Belarus, not Bulgaria

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Thanks, yes; slip of the tongue.

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Originally Posted by John83

Lads, maybe knock off the ad hominem bullshirt and discuss the game, however painful that may be?

Yesterday just reaffirmed what I've thought since Luxembourg: Kenny's not right for this. I backed him to that point, but if you keep losing to bad teams, then you're an extremely bad team. Using elo ratings, the 15 games under Kenny have a performance rating almost exactly equal to the current rating of Bulgaria, 84th in the world. That's where Kenny has us. That's where our seeding is sliding towards.

Bad as this squad is, it's not that bad, but I don't see any coherence in how we try to attack. For all his fine talk, it was crosses from McClean and Horgan that made most of the half chances yesterday. Horgan at least seemed to have a bit of life about him.

McClean didn't look at the races. Maybe there's some caveat to that in that his preseason was interrupted by a club move, dropping a division after being told he was finished at his club. Maybe he'll be a little better next window, but I'm coming around to the idea that he's not all that. Molumby didn't look up to it. I'm a little worried about Coleman. He stood off his man for a footballing age to let him get the shot away for the goal. What was he thinking? He lost Ronaldo the other night too, and for all that I dismissed that as just a function of Ronaldo being nigh unmarkable, I'm inclined to worry that Coleman is getting old. Or, like McClean, maybe he's just off the boil. Anyway, you think about these things when you draw to a team outside the top 100 in the world. Azerbaijan are crap, so crap that we rarely play teams of that ilk: Moldova, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, ... they're better than the Andorras, the Faroes, and the Gibraltars, but that's not saying much.

Cullen remains a bright spot, as do Duffy and Egan. I wish I had more to say, but we drew with Azerbaijan. They're awful. So are we.

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Even to this day we have Irish fans condescendingly refer to 'bad teams' at intl level as if Ireland were supposed to be a notch or two higher. Not an excuse for not beating them but AZ are not a bad team, they were actually unfortunate not to win, they provided more creativity on the ball in attack than we ever did, they were very well organised, were better prepared for this game and neutered us. Their goal aced ours. Why are they so disrespected?
The Faroes, who you also call a crap team, last night they played Denmark and gave them one hell of a game to a packed stadium that rocked. Surreal to to see Danish players diving left right and centre playing against the Faroes. I take it you don't watch that much intl football but are just spouting cliches. The Faroes have developed their football potential and it's still a work in process, they do their upmost to develop their technical game. They are an intl team which represents 50k people on a few rocks in the North Atlantic and despite that they managed to get themselves promoted to the third div in the Nations League. 'Pound for pound' the Faroes leave Ireland in the dust, football wise Ireland is not fit to lick their boots.

Selection was wrong, some substitutions were wrong. When you see the mistakes McClean made vs PT, compare the improvements with Doherty and Coleman as WB, surely your gut tells you the change to make is not the change he made yday! Seeing McClean on the teamsheet sucked the life out of me. What he did during the 90 mins was totally predictable. Assuming McGrath was rotated for Serbia, with the idea that we'd have enough about us to beat Az (with most of the ball) - that's a fair call - but it was the wrong call. Molumby and Cullen are different players offering the same thing - energy, destruction and defensive cover. Cullen's passing range has improved immeasurably, but isn't a schemer. Molumby will never be a schemer. We didn't need both of them.

The Warm up was poor, and sloppy. They finished with - an almost child like routine - whereby player sets up outside the box, rolls the coach, and shoots from the edge of the area. Few scored, few hit the target. Serbia x2, Luxembourg, Azerbaijan - all goals conceded from shooting from distance - we simply don't do it, and from what I can see don't have the players (Hourihane aside to do it).

Sometimes you need a bit of luck, sometimes you make your own luck. We do neither. Parrot was arguably coming into the game more when he was taken off. Horgan was poor when he came on, albeit his crossing was the best of the lot. Hourihane did very little, and the best of the players introduced (albeit for little more than a cameo) was James Collins - not rated - yet his finest contributions came winning the ball out wide, in midfield, and on the press - none of the places we needed him to be! Robinson showed that he should have started. He wasn't without fault, but he was central to most good elements of our play.

Problems for us:
- vision: Too slow, always two touches too many, one pass too late, or too much. Matt Doherty time and again had so much free space on the right hand side when the right ball would have opened play up very quickly. Azerbaijan scouted us well. They defended narrow, knowing that space out wide just invites lots of crosses in, for a team not really suited to attacking them in open play. We don't do the one thing that most teams between seeds 2 & 5 do, the 5 yd slip pass inside.

- trust: Our players don't trust each other, don't have belief in themselves, or each other. This possibly stems back to club level, where someone else will get them out of trouble. We've a huge problem in this regard. Off the top of the head, there were double-figures worth times when we simply turned down the chance to play a simple forward pass to a teammate in space (relative to the international game). It's maddening, and it's senior players (Coleman, Duffy, McClean) who are nearly exclusively the worst offenders of it.

- communication:: non-existent. It was suggested before, but I disregarded it, that there's a split in the camp. I don't think it's a conscious thing, definitely not, but I'm inclined to believe that there is something subconsciously there. It's great when you hear about such a player barking instructions - I'd much prefer players to be communicating with the overlap recipient, or the player receiving the ball. It's one of the most basic things, and we don't do it - that's abundently clear. I feel sorry for Cullen in this regard, he offers himself constantly as an out ball, and it's showing that playing for Anderlecht is helping him. His game has improved significantly. He's demanding the ball from the cbs, but plenty of times he received the ball, could have turned on it, but never got the call.

- sloppiness: Its almost upsetting to see how sloppy we were at times yesterday. I want to put it down to where the majority of our squad are in their careers (not getting game-time), but there's got to be more to it than that.
We're slow of thought and action. We make some absolutely stupid movements & ridiculous decisions. Mightn't seem like much, but when you consistently do them over 90 mins, they add up, and there were times where we simply sucked the energy out of the efforts made with just poor calculation, decisions and execution. We've actually stooped to the level that playing a pass correctly becomes a challenge at times. Too often a player has to check his run because the ball is played behind, or played to the outside instead of the inside. It's become so endemic in our play, that fans seem to have taken it for granted, or accepted even.
It's not a broken record, it's experience, and it's from coaching, but there's one example. We won a free kick, just outside our box, first half 20mins in. Duffy took the ball - the simple ball into space to Cullen was on. He dithered, passed back to Bazunu from the edge of the box, then ran backwards to parallel to the 6yd box, before Bazunu had no choice to pump it long, halfway in the Azeri half where Idah chased. that means our team is stretched across 3/4 of the length of the pitch, and we do that so often. It absolutely kills us. We do not push up the pitch quick enough, or often enough - and for me it's a trust issue We're afraid of getting caught out behind.

Further sloppiness is our inability to close down quick enough out wide. We started the game well yesterday because we put pressure on Azerbaijan from the start and from the front. We did it for about 11/12 minutes, then Aaron Connolly stopped doing it, as did Parrot to an extent. Kenny was fully merited intaking off Connolly. Maybe barrelling him out of it at ht and giving him 15 mins would have been an option, but the goal just before half-time forced his hand.

There's a few things that I've read in the posts during and after the game that concerns me.
I'm more convinced than ever - but understand I'm in a minority, and moreso that on the surface it seems absurd - that we will not improve until Shane Duffy is out of the team. As a back's to the wall defender, he's imperious, but his limitations (forget footballing ability here) are so significant that I think we're blinded by his attributes. He's slow, his positioning at times is awful, and he's so concerned by getting caught in behind, that he sits waaay too deep. And it is killing us - not in decisive individual moments, but in terms of space, our use of space (or lack of it). I can see why Kenny has picked Bazunu. He has guts beyond belief - not the blood and thunder kind - but belief in himself. He's prone to a lapse in concentration (dropping the corner yday - first reaction was a foul/nudge, but there was no replay to confirm). His sweeping up is top-class, and his distribution is excellent. I wish Duffy would trust him more.

I feel for Troy Parrot. I've seen people online complaining about him, he's not ready, etc. The movement of Parrot (off-camera) is absolutely incredible. It's clear that himself, Idah, Connolly have a rapport, and it will bear fruit in the years to come. It's very clear - and should be very clear to Kenny, that Parrot needs that free role (we've settled on calling it the "10" so lets stick with that). Not giving it to him makes mugs of us all.

We're all myopic to a degree on here, but there's things that are said that can't be challenged because this site is not allowing pictures to be uploaded. It would cut a serious amount of bull**** out.
A 3 man defence for me suits the personnel we have available, and the personnel we're going to have. However, it is not right for this team, because frankly, there appears to be a lack of trust between the main components of it.
John Egan was superb yesterday, relatively speaking. He's so comfortable in the 3 man defence, and you can see he backs himself, trusts those around him, and is born for it. Seamus Coleman struggled yesterday. I'd go so far as to say it's probably the worst game I've seen from him, by his high standards. He was by no means our worst player, but he did not play well and his unforced errors were sky high. He was not comfortable with the formation, and there were a few times where himself, Duffy and Cullen were having serious discussions about it. I don't know if he was deciding himself to stay close to Duffy, but we didn't get the benefits that we should have from it. Yet on the other side, Egan really pushed on, unfortunately ahead of him was dross.

And I'm simply baffled by the criticism of Doherty yday. He had three high-profile mistakes, but he got an epic amount of work on the right flank yday, and (in the parlance of another sport) he cleared up a stupid amount of breaking ball. He probably should have scored as well. He was clearly gassed when he came off, unfortunately.
I'd advocate going back to a flat back 4 due to Duffy. We're too limited in midfield, and we don't use the gains that we should get from the 3 well enough. What that means for Doherty and Coleman I don't know.

Right now, I see the number of players that we have as certainties on the teamsheet drop by the game: John Egan, Josh Cullen, Adam Idah. They were absolutely superb yesterday in their own right, and shouldered an incredible amount of responsibility.
Everyone knows we're in serious trouble in midfield. Any team that struggles in that area of the pitch finds another way.

Seamus should have scored inside the first ten mins, Doherty's possibly. Either go in, and it's a totally different game. Molumby & Idah should have scored in the 2nd half, and for all his reputation in the opposition box, Duffy's missed header was poor. It really could have been a 3-1, 4-1 victory very easily.

Not sure where he goes from here. The tide is turning on him absolutely now, and I don't see him getting another contract. I feel for him because as much as he has made mistakes, he's been let down by probably the worst state of footballing affairs going back to the 60s, and has been let down by players too.

3-4-3 is for soaking up pressure and attacking on the counter. It suits the players we have and it works well for us. But in a game where the onus was on us to take the initiative and dictate play, the 3-4-3 left a sizeable area of space between Molumby/ Cullen and Idah, and it was crying out for a player to drop into that space and play as a 10 – and we had that player on the pitch in Parrott. As it was, we just crowded ourselves out on the flanks, and when Azerbaijan did win the ball back, it was relatively easy for them to advance up the middle and into our half of the field.
I can sympathise with Kenny in saying we had enough chances to comfortably win the game because we did. Within the early parts of the game, Doherty, Coleman and Connolly all had good chances to score and at the very minimum test their goalie – but didn’t. And this was the theme for the rest of the game, opportunities were there but we wasted them. That said, Kenny didn’t adapt to the game unfolding in front of him, his substitutions were like for like, and a competitive draw at home to a team clearly inferior to us is not acceptable (especially in context of losing to Luxembourg).
I buy into what Kenny wants to do, I know this will improve us for the longer term, but we can’t sit on our hands and see a home defeat to Luxembourg and rescuing a draw against Azerbaijan as acceptable.

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Originally Posted by geysir

Even to this day we have Irish fans condescendingly refer to 'bad teams' at intl level as if Ireland were supposed to be a notch or two higher. Not an excuse for not beating them but AZ are not a bad team, t
The Faroes, who you also call a crap team, last night they played Denmark and gave them one hell of a game to a packed stadium that rocked. 'Pound for pound' the Faroes leave Ireland in the dust, football wise Ireland is not fit to lick their boots.

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Azerbaijan are a bad team. The Faroes are a crap team.

Their players are pros and better than, say, you or me for sure. But there's different level of pros and the likes of the Elo ratings (Irl 1600, Az 1370, Far 1250) or even their results (4 points between them in Euro 2020 qualifying for example) will back that up. We are supposed to be a notch or two higher than that.

Pound for pound comparisons are meaningless. If the Faroes had 5,000,000 people, yes, their structure means they would be beating us very regularly. But they don't, so they're crap. That that's a relative comparison should be taken as read.

Couple of things you've picked up on Kingdom. First, the shooting drill, that's been the same forever and a day at this stage. Might have been the Bosnia playoff I was at, can't recall which game exactly, I may even have mentioned it here, but the shooting drill was worse than anything I'd ever seen at junior level. James McClean was the only player with a decent clean strike the whole drill, Harry Arter looked like a lad they'd pulled out of the crowd with his work shoes on the efforts were so laughable.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Bazunu was fouled when he dropped the ball either, not sure there was ever a replay, but I thought he was bumped/barged/nudged/pushed, whatever by one of the Azeri players and that's why the ball came loose.
Good post overall, you're spot on about the lack of trust at times from certain players, and the inevitable limitation with Duffy at the back (although I don't think we can drop him at the moment).

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Originally Posted by Bielsa´s irish

There is no chance we beat Serbia. The are on the high we are down. Unless we play with no pressure. And go for it. With the chance they pegged as back. Actually i think serbia is gonna play this way

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We supposedly had no chance in Faro either …

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Originally Posted by passinginterest

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Bazunu was fouled when he dropped the ball either, not sure there was ever a replay, but I thought he was bumped/barged/nudged/pushed, whatever by one of the Azeri players and that's why the ball came loose.

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You can watch it back on the RTÉ Player (2:29:30) but there's no foul for me. He just takes his eye off the ball; there is one Azerbaijan player beside him but - allowing that there was no replay and the camera in the stand was a fair way away - there's no contact at all. I think Houghton called it correctly when he was said his mind got ahead of the game - he was already throwing the ball out before he caught it and took his eye off it entirely, kind of like Bonner against Holland in 1994.

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Originally Posted by geysir

Even to this day we have Irish fans condescendingly refer to 'bad teams' at intl level as if Ireland were supposed to be a notch or two higher. Not an excuse for not beating them but AZ are not a bad team, they were actually unfortunate not to win, they provided more creativity on the ball in attack than we ever did, they were very well organised, were better prepared for this game and neutered us. Their goal aced ours. Why are they so disrespected?
The Faroes, who you also call a crap team, last night they played Denmark and gave them one hell of a game to a packed stadium that rocked. Surreal to to see Danish players diving left right and centre playing against the Faroes. I take it you don't watch that much intl football but are just spouting cliches. The Faroes have developed their football potential and it's still a work in process, they do their upmost to develop their technical game. They are an intl team which represents 50k people on a few rocks in the North Atlantic and despite that they managed to get themselves promoted to the third div in the Nations League. 'Pound for pound' the Faroes leave Ireland in the dust, football wise Ireland is not fit to lick their boots.

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Bad teams are teams that lose. I know that may offend your footballing sensibilities, but I can be patronising too, and football is results-oriented. Anyone who disagrees can go watch ballet. Azerbaijan are ranked outside the top 100 in the world because they keep losing. Except to us, strangely. They don't get hammered very often, but they don't score much either. Sound familiar?

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Originally Posted by CSAD

We supposedly had no chance in Faro either …

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we lost that match with a little help from the referee as in Serbia but we lost

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Originally Posted by paul_oshea

Coleman's injured so maybe that had something to do with it.

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Coleman got injured in injury time - looks like he did the hamstring. So it's nothing to do with it.

Just looking at the Duffy goal again, but McClean pulled that ball over the sideline before the cross went in. Got away with that.

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Originally Posted by ifk101

Just looking at the Duffy goal again, but McClean pulled that ball over the sideline before the cross went in. Got away with that.

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I didn't want to dampen the mood further, but noticed it myself. and if we're really being fair, the keeper should have saved it - it was straight at him.

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Originally Posted by Kingdom

.. and if we're really being fair, the keeper should have saved it - it was straight at him.

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Yes and no given how close the header was and the power behind it. He did get two hands on it, and not far from pushing it over the bar.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

You can watch it back on the RTÉ Player (2:29:30) but there's no foul for me. He just takes his eye off the ball; there is one Azerbaijan player beside him but - allowing that there was no replay and the camera in the stand was a fair way away - there's no contact at all. I think Houghton called it correctly when he was said his mind got ahead of the game - he was already throwing the ball out before he caught it and took his eye off it entirely, kind of like Bonner against Holland in 1994.

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I haven't seen it again yet but that was my thought at the time too. I always hated those ones. It was a bit like the one Randolph dropped vs Wales that could have led to a penalty. As a keeper I always preferred a cross to have pace and to be well over my head, so my arms would be straight and the ball would firmly stick into your hands when it arrived. I hated the ones that lacked pace and were barely over head height, meaning your arms wouldn't be fully stretched out. They were always the ones that could pop out, especially if there was any contact with another player.