Only on here for a short bit. Second half against Georgia was as good as we showed so far in the group. I thought Whelan, Walters, Clark were excellent throughout, with McCarthy and Long very good in second half.
While obviously it's great to have got back into the position we now find ourselves, I would still worry. I think Scotland definitely have the potential to beat Poland in Glasgow, while I would be sceptical about our chances of getting a win in Warsaw.
I still find myself getting quite angry when thinking about O'Neill. The Gibraltar game was a real opportunity, with yellow cards hanging over squad members, at having a look at options. When you think that he left Eunan O'Kane at home......
Our formation is flawed. We rely on our full-backs for width, we rely on our full-backs to hit the bye-line, yet we only play with one what you could call attacking floater, Wes, who generally stays to a central line. Countless times the ball worked it's way to Robbie Brady whose only option was to whip in a cross to Robbie Keane or John Walters, or for Robbie Brady to work the ball back to Hendrick, back to wes, into Whelan, back to O'Shea, over to Coleman, back to McCarthy, back to O'Shea, repeat ad nauseum. Either you provide your attacking full-back with someone to link up with, provide an overlap -whatever- or you push them further up the pitch to become auxiliary widemen, and stick an extra holding midfielder in to guard the centre-backs. Seeing as how we have two holding midfielders in the team anyway, I don't understand the tactics O'Neill utilises.
People constantly say we don't see Coleman or McCarthy reproduce their Everton form for Ireland. The charge is fair, the evidence less so. We don't have the same formation as Everton. McCarthy plays as a tandem with Barry or Besic or whoever the hell they pick beside him. He sits, he receives, he breaks up play, and then sits again. We have him doing half of those or none at all. I'm not saying he shouldn't be able to do it, in fairness if he's as good as we think he is, then he should be, but he's not doing for Everton what he does for us, because they don't use him like we do. Similar for Coleman. For Everton, he has either Mirallas, Lukaku or Delofeu in front of him, providing him with either a solid option on the outside, to receive and then give, or on the inside, which stretches the full-back allowing Coleman the space to either overlap and get the ball around the corner, or dragging the full-back inside allowing Coleman to attack properly on the outside,rather than the isolation he has when playing for us, which results in either a poor ball into the box due to pressure, or the ball being lost from being overplayed.
If we can solve that (what I would call a conundrum) then I think we'll be in a much better place as a team. McGeady, Long, Grealish (were he to declare) and Brady himself are solutions (allowing for us getting a proper left-back to let Brady play his natural role).
Lastly, the manager should be ashamed at the state of our set-piece. If we're that crap at them, then stop doing what we constantly do, and start working on proper routines, so that defenders have something to think about. It's so bloody annoying.
To me, this is the way I'd like to see the team lining out against Germany:
____________________Westwood_________
Coleman _____ OShea __________ Clark ___________ Brady
_________Hendrick_____James Mc______Quinn___________
Long__________________Walters__________________Wes __
I'd a look at the German Line-up and to be perfectly honest, I've no idea how they lined up. I could see three recognised starting defenders, so I assume Emre Can was at right back, with Hector left-back? As I said prior to Gelsenkirchen, the Germans are weak at fullback (it was Rudy, Ginter and Durm against us in Gelsenkirchen).
If you think that they'll have a front line of Mueller, Goetze und Ozil, of which neither is really a totem, and with no natural width, then it is possible for us to make it a real slugfest by really packing the middle of the pitch, which technically with Hendrick, McCarthy, Quinn and Wes on the pitch you'd be doing, but also giving a bit of width with Brady and Coleman. They'll be crucial, as will Walters and hopefully Long.
