They had 8 changes in their team, so i doubt its their strongest. The squad seems pretty decent but their defense is pretty shambolic, marginally better than ours I think. A combination of the swiss defense and the Slovak attack would be a potent force at the Euros.
I've re-watched the McShame goal a couple of times, and its actually a serious bit of skill to do what he did especially with the angle he was at. I actually think he thought he could safely pat it back to Randolph. Either way a serious bit of innate skill. I say innate because it was all in the subconcious somewhere.
Good to see the consensus on ward, although a couple of posters in earlier posts mentioned they thought he was solid(I thought SkStu-we know his bias :D - but i could be wrong). Lets use this cull to rid the squad of the dead-wood that have been around for a while now. Start with Ward and McShane, cruel but unless we are desperately stuck in friendlies i dont think they should be near the squad. I do like McShane though.
I don't hate or loathe Whelan btw, I just think he is an extremely lucky player. No one realises he is actually a golfer.
SVD I think that post earlier of yours was the first funny post you've ever had, do it more often, you're actually more normal(and even fun) than you let on.
On O'Kane don't be all prematurely ejaculating yourselves here(as there is a tendency to do), he was decent but I think in the bigger scheme of things and over the course of say 30 caps we would see he is fairly average. We have a lot of average midfielders who don't really set us alight, but hoolahan is the exception, i still really wish he had worked on his upper body strenght. Look at messi how strong he is for the size of him, i think it would add so much more to wessis game if he had that. I say this cos I think he has the skill to take on players and run past them, but not the strength to match. Too late now though, and he still is easily able to compete at this level for another couple of years so I hope he doesn't call it quits after the Euros.
I think our defense is going to be our strongest asset coming into the World cup, going on the last couple of games. We could certainly do with unearthing another Striker between now and the "business end" of the WC qualifiers. I also hope MON stays on, but I'm begining to feel that he isn't going to.
We can look to the Euros with optimisim.
