Armenia v Republic of Ireland - Tuesday, 9 September 2025 - 2026 World Cup Qualifier

Combined player stats for the two qualifiers

I don’t know about hate for Ogbene but certainly I felt he got a bit more criticism than he deserved.

He made a great run and cross the other night from his own box.

Against Hungary he threw the cat among the pigeons and caused panic among the Hungarians.

He obviously had some poor play also but I thought he showed more potential than most of the others

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Originally Posted by Jd2793

I also agree with d.delaneys analysis of the game. we were set up all wrong way too much space between the lines. midfielders arent mobile yet are expected to cover loads of ground because of the space we let open. surely we can find a manager who can mask cullens lack of legs? he doesnt look this bad for burnley. we definitely have the players to win that game last night comfortably by 2 goals.

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Yep, Delaney made some very good points.

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Originally Posted by seanfhear

Thing is Michael O'Neill does seem to have a talent for international management, all-be-it, the six county team was very patient with him. And nobody has done a whole lot with Stoke since the Tony Pulis days !

I mean, it is debatable if Michael O'Neill would ever have been interested in managing the the 26 County team, but was he ever asked ? !

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Don’t forget that NI only won once in their first 18 matches under O’Neill.

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Originally Posted by EalingGreen

The key words from that being "expectation" and "progress".

Re the former, might it not be that ROI fans are being blinded by the quality of (certain) individual players available, such that you are greatly underestimating all the other aspects which need to be in place to build a consistently successful team? In other words your expectations are rather too high, at least for the present circumstances in which you find yourselves?

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Pretty much yeah.

They’re essentially looking at Ferguson, Kelleher and Collins and thinking we should be competing with or beating x, y and z. Completely forgetting (and I’m like a broken record on this) that we almost play without a midfield. We can’t maintain decent possession because of it; we can’t feed our forwards with good through balls; and our defence is always under more pressure because we’re so easy to play against. And…we also don’t really have good quality wide players to compensate for it.

The cherry on top of all of that is the low morale around the team, and that’s a killer.

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Originally Posted by Fixer82

I don’t know about hate for Ogbene but certainly I felt he got a bit more criticism than he deserved.

He made a great run and cross the other night from his own box.

Against Hungary he threw the cat among the pigeons and caused panic among the Hungarians.

He obviously had some poor play also but I thought he showed more potential than most of the others

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I think that's more balanced for sure, though he did get hauled off at halftime in Armenia (along with Taylor of course, who also drew criticism here), so posters here weren't alone in thinking he wasn't up to scratch in the first half.

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Originally Posted by The Fly

Don’t forget that NI only won once in their first 18 matches under O’Neill.

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Yes, NI did show great patience at that time and it surely did pay off for them in the long term. Interesting, how that did work out so well for them.

i love ogbene. i just don't think he was anywhere close to being match fit and his performance against Armenia reflected that.

Match unfit or overtrained - i.e. possible he pushed himself too hard in his injury recovery. Regardless, it questions the selection decisions. Tony O’D asked HH about the Ogbene/ Taylor selection and subsequent half-time substitution of both post-match but didn’t really get an answer. Also, would be good to clarify if HH is still leaning on the O’Shea input. The space between the lines is something we have seen too often with O’Shea’s involvement in the senior setup. HH teams of the past are known to be structured and compact.

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

Combined player stats for the two qualifiers

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Collins barely 50:50 on duels stands out to me. As do Cullen's passing stats compared with Knight's.