They have two great players, one decent midfielder, and a few lower Premier League players who would be in the mix for a spot in our team, but outside of that their squad is vastly inferior to ours.
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They have two great players, one decent midfielder, and a few lower Premier League players who would be in the mix for a spot in our team, but outside of that their squad is vastly inferior to ours.
I'd be very happy with at least 5, even 6 of the starting lineup from the last day. And bale showed that he can single handledly win a game for Wales...cue the Aiden McGeady follow up/comparison to one of the best players in the world.
What would a draw with Scotland next month provide? I think they should factor in away results with higher signficance than home. It would also encourage home teams to go more for the wins when a draw would suffice.
What players? Did you see them yesterday?
Davies at left back would be an obvious improvement. Ashley Williams would probably get ahead of Wilson. Joe Allen , maybe, but he's really a lesser, more limited version of McCarthy. Ramsey is a super player. So really Ramsey, Bale and Davies, with possibly Williams too, and a few others could be squad players.
I agree entirely. Of course all you're doing is repeating what I said in another thread last night:)Quote:
Originally Posted by paul_oshea
I think that half their team, plus or minus one, would get into ours, maybe one or two players more than Scotland. Speed had them playing with real belief.
I'd say I'd have williams and King in there as well both premiership players so with allen thats yer 6. McCarthy is still in Ireland for as much as his club form. Always thought hennessy was ok, certainly better than forde but his club runs havent gone very well. I don't know enough about Chester really.
Most of their players, midfield especially are premierhip players. Like our players a lot of them need more gametime though.
Yes stutts I repeated you sorry, but unlike you and most I already had the opinion beforehand and therefore I acknoweldge that fact which I believe should be done more often on here, so I thanked your post all the same :P
When I say our team I mean our first team, not our squad.
I don't rate Hennessy at all btw. I've no idea about Chester but he seems to do ok for Hull so he wouldn't be far off comparable to Wilson. I'd say Ledley could get into our midfield, as would Scotland's Scott Brown yet neither seems too highly rated here.
Hennessey is a spoofer, I'd take any of our goalkeepers ahead of him. Chester seems like a good player but we have loads of defenders like him who are decent-enough Premier League defenders but never likely to be much better.
Ledley and Brown are the same, except substitute midfielder for defender. They're Glenn Whelan-level players, ie good but not great.
I wouldn't be that envious of Wales. Their midfield looks good in a fantasy football sense, but they seem to lack balance and have no decent striker. Joe Allen looks out of his depth at Liverpool, no great shame in that compared to what we've got, but sometimes I think the club status of a player can be misleading. He's useful but I don't think he'd add anything significant to us. They don't seem to have a midfield enforcer of any description, although I'd admit there's a couple of players from the team last night I'm not overly familiar with. Last time I took any notice of Neil Taylor I think he was playing left back... but obviously didn't start there with Davies playing? Obviously Bale is on another planet to anything we have and Ramsey's coming of age last season would indicate an upward curve, but many would have said the same about Stephen Ireland once upon a time :) I think they could use some of what we've got even more than the other way around, although Bale's greatness kind of skews things.
I wonder how many Wales supporters were drooling over our players after our late win in San Marino (albeit in a much more difficult month)?
Yet here some are ready to swap half the team for a bunch who could easily have lost to Andorra, if it were not for the effort of super Bale.
Can you not hold counsel until wales actually do something?
Some of ye have no sense of timing, no wonder you are having relationship difficulties.
I think it's fascinating how Wales were improving so much under Speed yet both his predecessor and successor are struggling.
And I don't think results should be the arbiter. Even apart from Bale, we'd drool over a Ramsey or an Ashley Williams, plus a couple of others. I said something like 4, maybe even 6 at a stretch, Wales players might get into our team and I stand by that. My other point was that this puts things into perspective, perhaps we shouldn't be so downbeat on what we did.
Would we drool over Ashley Williams? I mean, he's a good player but he's not the kind of player we'd drool over. We had John O'Shea, who was flat out more talented and achieved far more in the game, and it's only the last year or so that people have started to appreciate him. I've seen Ashley Williams play a number of games for Wales and I've never seen him stand out, but I've seen him look shaky many times.
Up four places to 62nd in the latest release: http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/irish...fifa-rankings/
These ranking are just ridiculously volatile.
Norway for example were in the first pot in the draw 3 years ago for WC 2014.
They finished 4th in their qual group. If the WC draw was being held today they would be in the 5th pot.
If we beat Gibraltar, Scotland, USA, Poland in the next few months, then I would expect us to be comfortably 3rd seeds. If we draw/beat with Germany, beat England at the Aviva or beat Scotland home and away, then I think we could nick 2nd seeds.
I personally think we will be 3rd seeds - I think we will make good movement between now and the summer, but I don't see us taking points off Germany, beating England or taking 6 points off Scotland.
The more results like Slovenia losing to Estonia or Hungary losing to Northern Ireland the better for us. We could have done without the Czechs beating Holland as they will have taken loads of points from that.
The Gibraltar game does not matter at all!
Ireland women's team are 29th in the world rankings!
Is there any team sport (male or female), where Iceland is outranked by Ireland in world rankings?
Cycling - Ireland as a nation are 18th (only 3 riders) - no sign of Iceland!Quote:
Originally Posted by geysir
Rugby obviously (both codes)
Ireland has won the golf world cup and been runner up in the snooker world cup (both team events). Iceland hasn't.
Baseball
Cricket
Fairly sure Iceland would be crap at the aul hurling and Gaelic
Equestrian (Ireland usually top division; Iceland...not)
Hockey
Aussie Rules (not really a sport in fairness; more of a fight)
So - lots
Out of all those strange, rare and peculiar sports listed I'll give you hockey as the only sport worth a mention, but only the (pansy) field variety, Iceland takes the kudos in ice hockey, the man's game.
So the definition of a strange, rare and peculiar sport is one that isn't played in Iceland?
Right so.
We're better at tennis too. Suck on that IcelandQuote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Ireland are in Europe/Africa group II
Iceland have never been higher than Europe group III
Well if you are actually serious (which I wasn't) and being idiotic, then yes I'd say GAA and Aussie rules would be regarded as strange,rare and peculiar in most every country outside the one country it's 99.9% played in. Perhaps that's a bizarre thought for some to take, but there you are:)Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Rugby has a popularity in certain countries, cricket outside the usual suspects would be a rare/peculiar sport in most areas of Europe and it would be utterly bizarre to think that cricket or baseball could be be played in an arctic climate above any minimum kindergarten standard.
The main competitive team sports in Europe in no particular order, played in most every country, are football, basketball, handball, hockey (ice and field), volleyball, and water polo. Rugby is very popular in one traditional area but not widespread, the main european competition has little interest outside 5 or 6 unions.
Ireland is struggling at this football thing, GAA is the real national sport, a situation not unlike New Zealand where rugby is regarded as the national sport and football is a game they stuggle to play well.
Ah here I was with you until water polo. Ban this blatant troll, tets.
You really are a tedious troll, "serious" or not. But I think you know that.Quote:
Originally Posted by geysir
For what it's worth - more European countries entered the rugby world cup (40) than the basketball world cup (24). Neither Ireland nor Iceland entered the basketball world cup (neither did Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Norway, Romania, Holland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary - played in most every country, eh?). Basketball Ireland is bankrupt at the moment, but when we had a team - it was better than Iceland's.
Ice hockey? Would you stop. 46 countries in the world in their World Cup. Mostly countries with snow. Not really applicable here.
Volleyball - the north play and are about the same standard as Iceland. Can hardly be a good thing.
Water polo?! Right so Ted. Still fewer European countries entering the world Cup than in rugby.
Handball is awfully silly. There, I said it. I don't mind it - nearly played it in college - but it is awfully silly.
So - we're better at basketball. Ice hockey not applicable for climate reasons. Volleyball - a quarter of the country is as good as Iceland. Water polo - evidence of senility. Why would you play niche stuff like that anyway when you can pick up a hurl?
And what's Iceland got after all that? Handball? A game so irrelevant in Ireland we have another sport called handball? Yeah, you can keep that, thanks.
Even football is a one-off aberration.
don't think he's being a troll, some people have their own opinions on what constitutes a "proper" sport. Americans can't understand why baseball isn't massive worldwide, the French do love their boules, etcQuote:
Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin
for the record, I think Ireland plays a much wider variety of sports than Iceland, while they are stronger in some individual sports.
Anyway, back on topic.
Going to throw tennis out there again, seeing as it was ignored! Ireland are decidedly on the up, our top 4 guys are all pushing around lifetime highs at the moment (teams consist of 5 players + a coach), while Iceland are nowhere to be found. You should probably look into how huge the Davis and Fed cup are. Wouldn't put it into a bracket lower than rugby, cricket or that ilk as it's huge in pretty much every major European country as well as growing in Asia and having always been a big thing in the Americas, north and south.Quote:
Originally Posted by geysir
edit: didn't read the last line of tets post, sorry I'll shh too..
I was joking, commandant :)Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Yeah! We don't do that with any other sports!Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
True, but I just don't think riding horses around in swimming pools lashing sticks at rubber ducks to try propel them through two upright posts at either end of the pool is really the height of our cultural contributions, so I kept shtum about water polo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin
enough. this time I mean it.
back to talking about world rankings, etc. There's an "Other sports" section if you want to compare and contrast the sporting worlds of Iceland and Ireland
amaccann raised it in the Gibraltar match thread, but I'm assuming games against Gibraltar won't count toward, or against, our FIFA ranking?
Correct - it does not countQuote:
Originally Posted by DannyInvincible
Just as well. Only winning 7-0 might see us fall a few places :)
Maybe FIFA won't recognise Robbie's hat trick and refuse on principle to list him ahead of Ronaldo.
It might get confusing, like with darts and boxing.
How far will Poland jump up from 70th placed after beating Germany who were no 1?
You tell us!
I think we be moving up now a little :)
On the FIFA website, there is a calculator of points. Our game against Gibraltor, doesn't count, but we should rise in the rankings with the draw yesterday. I think in terms of points we have risen from 506 to 519 points.
Looking ahead to the draw for WC 2018, there are a few european countries ahead of us that are very reachable in the coming few games like montenegro, but equally there are countries behind us that may soon overtake us like Poland and Norn iron if they continue their excellent runs. Beating nations like Germany and Greece is worth a massive amount of points.
If I was to guess, should we take 8 points off Poland and Scotland, then we would be high 3rd seeds and have an outside bet of 2nd seeds. Beating the Germans would cement us as 2nd seeds imo. Winning friendlies against the USA and England will also help massively.
It has been a funny campaign for alot of countries. The rankings could look very different this time next year. At least, it's a positive change from being the highest ranked 5th seed, as we were last year.
Think we move up to around 57th place next weekQuote:
Originally Posted by Bungle