Robbie Keane

Robbie Keane doesn't only score against the small teams. If you actually listen to what I am saying instead of going for the condescending soundbites you would realise that!

I already provided a list of the teams Robbie has scored against in competitive matches. Probably 85-90% of his goals come against bottom 3 seeded teams. I'm not going to do the calculations. He has scored a quite paltry amount of goals against top 3 seeded teams. Granted, his record against the bottom 3 seeded teams is superb. They all count. I never said otherwise!

It's not his goalscoring record that is the only issue anyways. His performances have been declining; or have I been watching different matches? He will be 34 years old by the time the next qualifying campaign starts. To accommodate him, we will have to eschew playing a 4-5-1/4-3-3 formation. He has implied in the press that he would walk away if the manager pursued other options. Fair enough, we have different ways of interpreting this. Some think it's because manager i.e. Martin would want to pursue other options in the starting 11 or a different formation. Others seem to think it's because Martin may not want to select him for squads. The latter I find doubtful.

I don't even know why I have to keep saying this anyways. I repeatedly said I would play him against teams like Moldova and Faroe Islands because of his experience and goalscoring record and he would make a great option off the bench. But I suppose it's more convenient to manipulate what someone is saying and twist it into a narky soundbite.

Long is playing Premier League football and has a respectable goalscoring record at that level; approximately 1 in 3 starts at club and slightly better at International. Keane is not playing at the same level and in my opinion it reflects in his performances when he plays against good defenders.

After Long, the options are uninspiring but it's a moot point. You have to start transitioning into the future sometime. The ideal scenario would be Martin does this, we qualify for the European Championships and we don't make a mockery of ourselves when we get there. This would be a decent platform for the harder World Cup campaign and potentially a new manager, if Martin wants to work at club level again.

I believe we have a decent spread of younger players that can share/alleviate the goalscoring burden with/on Keane in this campagn; Brady, McClean, McGeady, Pilkington, Long, Stokes, Gibson, McCarthy, Hendrick, Ireland, Reid and Hoolahan. I believe Martin can figure out how to get the best out of these players because the system was placed over their individual talents in the previous regime.

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Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks

Robbie Keane doesn't only score against the small teams. If you actually listen to what I am saying instead of going for the condescending soundbites you would realise that!

I already provided a list of the teams Robbie has scored against in competitive matches. Probably 85-90% of his goals come against bottom 3 seeded teams. I'm not going to do the calculations. He has scored a quite paltry amount of goals against top 3 seeded teams. Granted, his record against the bottom 3 seeded teams is superb. They all count. I never said otherwise!

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Robbie has scored about 14/37 competitive goals at World cup, play offs and against top 3 seeded teams in qualifiers. In friendly games, about 50% of his goals were against top 3 seeded teams. Nations Cup, I'd regard as friendly.

I think TOWKer should just have said that it's quite likely we need to play some version of 451 against the really good teams or else we'll have very little of the ball. Long may be better suited to playing up front if we do, so therefore we shouldn't always play Keane. It's not as if Keane has been indispensable against the big teams. After all he thrives on chances and we don't create many chances against the big teams.

I'd have agreed with a lot of that or certainly respected the opinion. Instead we got some silly comparisons to Klose and Shevchenko and an argument that Keane is over the hill and not well served playing in the MLS. That's a matter of opinion and mine is that I still think he looks sharp and I haven't noticed a decline in standard. I quite like international forwards being used to scoring goals rather than having to scrap at club level, and if anything he's less frustrating than he was in his prime! It's much the same with O'Driscoll in the rugby. He's also looking in great nick and still has something to offer at the top level at, what, 35?

TOWK is new and either a culchie or a Liverpool fan. We should cut him a bit of slack :)

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Originally Posted by irishfan86

Robbie's game has always been about quickness upstairs, not at his feet. That and his instincts and movement.

I don't feel any of this has diminished in recent years, despite his move to MLS, and feel if he returned to England with a top 10 team would continue to score goals at a rate he did in his so-called "prime."

Additionally, I think MLS has benefitted him in that he has had to take more responsibility on than ever before -- while he's generally been looked at as a central player wherever he has played, the focus on him as an individual has never been greater. With only three designated players (at most) on each MLS team, all of the energy from opponents is on shutting him down, in a way that would never happen in a top league like England's.

In my view, dropping him would not improve us as there aren't two strikers of superior quality -- in fact, there isn't one individual striker better than Keane we have available IMO.

His strike rate in our last campaign shows he's still got it -- I expect him to start and contribute for this next campaign, and he can likely at least come off the bench if he still wants to for our WC 2018 campaign.

I feel like I've been making posts along these lines for the better part of half a decade, and at some point Father Time will force me to change my tune, but Robbie's still got it and is still our best option up top.

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You are deluded.

His performance level has dropped way off in last 2 years. I'd say he averages about 5/10 level for Ireland now.

I think Ireland have been pretty rubbish for two years, so Keane's performances have to be seen in that context.

And quit the personal comments.

Yeah, if Keane's been a 5/10 player then so has more or less everybody in the team.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

I think Ireland have been pretty rubbish for two years, so Keane's performances have to be seen in that context.

And quit the personal comments.

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yeah, real personal.

Can we take into context that he was captain in this time also.

Why ?

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Originally Posted by harry crumb

yeah, real personal.

Can we take into context that he was captain in this time also.

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Right, he was captain so he should have been running the channels and winning more headers? He is obviously a leader and an organiser, which is why he's captain, and he is capable of doing things nobody else in the team can. I think there have been games where it would have been more appropriate strategically to play a big lump like Long or Doyle up on his own, but that doesn't diminish the fact Keane is the best goalscorer we've ever produced and remains our most potent striker. It's a shame he can't run around doing donkey work all day and not scoring goals - which seems to be the only way an Irish striker can get any credit from certain quarters - but unfortunately we'll just have to settle for one of the most prolific strikers in the history of international football. Would only we had a Bobby Zamora.

Hey, still a great finisher.

However the way irishfan86 was talking its as if his age hasn't affected his game at all.

This is clearly not the case.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

Right, he was captain so he should have been running the channels and winning more headers? He is obviously a leader and an organiser, which is why he's captain, and he is capable of doing things nobody else in the team can. I think there have been games where it would have been more appropriate strategically to play a big lump like Long or Doyle up on his own, but that doesn't diminish the fact Keane is the best goalscorer we've ever produced and remains our most potent striker. It's a shame he can't run around doing donkey work all day and not scoring goals - which seems to be the only way an Irish striker can get any credit from certain quarters - but unfortunately we'll just have to settle for one of the most prolific strikers in the history of international football. Would only we had a Bobby Zamora.

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I think it's as much of a disservice to Long and Doyle to call them a big lump than anything I have said about Keane. Long and Doyle's donkey work benefited Keane for a long time. The latter's unselfishness, in particular, contributed significantly to positive results (whatever there were) over the last several years. In the past, we have even seen how much England valued such grafting players, in Emile Heskey.

Big lump is a bit harsh but I was being hyperbolic for a reason. Doyle and Long have been lauded for years for their unselfish work, running the channels and holding the ball up, etc. Few enough people have posed the tough question about whether those players are "unselfish" simply because they lack the courage or ability to be top strikers, like Keane. Perhaps that is being unfair, but certainly in Doyle's case he became very comfortable in his role as a striker nobody expects to score any goals, a role he has kept up as he tumbles down the leagues. Perhaps that is very harsh, or perhaps it's just accurate.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

Big lump is a bit harsh but I was being hyperbolic for a reason. Doyle and Long have been lauded for years for their unselfish work, running the channels and holding the ball up, etc. Few enough people have posed the tough question about whether those players are "unselfish" simply because they lack the courage or ability to be top strikers, like Keane. Perhaps that is being unfair, but certainly in Doyle's case he became very comfortable in his role as a striker nobody expects to score any goals, a role he has kept up as he tumbles down the leagues. Perhaps that is very harsh, or perhaps it's just accurate.

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For years...

Shane Long hasn't been given enough game time in an Irish shirt for you to come to that conclusion.

As for Doyle, I don't think he was ever a natural goalscorer like Keane is, but I think he has other qualities that Keane doesn't have.

Of course he does. He has attributes that have been far more celebrated in the Irish media and general discourse than the attrbutes Keane has. Being a workhorse is the ultimate attribute to the Dunphy crew, unless you play in midfield, in which case it's confusingly proof you're not good enough at this level. Long has for years (yes, years) been held up as the great white hope but has only really delivered in patches in his (admittedly fewer than I'd like) opportunities.

Doyle use to have other qualities but he's a theory these days and he's just faded into the background into the third level of English league football
If only Doyle had a bit of Robbie's persistence/outrageous skill/grit /confidence in his ability/ hard graft.

I think these days, Stokes and Doyle are much of a muchness, both are good link players at their prime and at best coming in from the left. I'd have my doubts that either of them will be be good enough for our needs.

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Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks

Probably 85-90% of his goals come against bottom 3 seeded teams. I'm not going to do the calculations. He has scored a quite paltry amount of goals against top 3 seeded teams. Granted, his record against the bottom 3 seeded teams is superb. They all count. I never said otherwise!

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Nineteen of his fifty-four goals against European opposition have come against teams that are top three seeds for Euro 2016, or 35%. And to put that into context, Niall Quinn only scored nineteen goals in total against European opposition, John Aldridge got 17, near half of which were against Latvia (before Latvia were decent for a while).

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Originally Posted by samhaydenjr

Nineteen of his fifty-four goals against European opposition have come against teams that are top three seeds for Euro 2016, or 35%. And to put that into context, Niall Quinn only scored nineteen goals in total against European opposition, John Aldridge got 17, near half of which were against Latvia (before Latvia were decent for a while).

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We played the following teams forty times since 2000 in competitive group fixtures; Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, France, Israel, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Wales, Italy, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Armenia, Sweden and Austria. He has scored 6 goals in those games including penalties and dead rubbers. More importantly in the context of my argument, he didn't look like scoring (and didn't) in Euro 2012.

We can all manipulate the statistics for our own argument. :p

Anyways. His scoring record isn't my argument for the rotation of Keane in certain games. It is merely part of the argument, along with his age, profile, formation, overall strength of his performances and form of other players. I also have a difference in interpretation of statements Keane has made to the press revolving the meaning of "walk away".

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

TOWK is new and either a culchie or a Liverpool fan. We should cut him a bit of slack :)

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TWOK'ers a Dub I reckon

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Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks

I don't even know why I have to keep saying this anyways

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Used 'anyways' twice. Sure sign of a Dub.

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Originally Posted by CraftyToePoke

TWOK'ers a Dub I reckon



Used 'anyways' twice. Sure sign of a Dub.

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Nah, 'n' anyways is Dublin.

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Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks

We played the following teams forty times since 2000 in competitive group fixtures; Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, France, Israel, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Wales, Italy, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Armenia, Sweden and Austria. He has scored 6 goals in those games including penalties and dead rubbers. More importantly in the context of my argument, he didn't look like scoring (and didn't) in Euro 2012.

We can all manipulate the statistics for our own argument. :p

Anyways. His scoring record isn't my argument for the rotation of Keane in certain games. It is merely part of the argument, along with his age, profile, formation, overall strength of his performances and form of other players. I also have a difference in interpretation of statements Keane has made to the press revolving the meaning of "walk away".

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We can all manipulate?
Robbie started playing and scoring in competitive games in 1999. Why do you start in 2000? Why ignore World Cup Finals and play offs.
Before you claimed that Robbie scored 85% to 90% against 4th 5th and 6th seeds.

He has scored against Yugoslav Turkey Netherlands Iran italy France Russia Estonia Sweden 10 goals
WC finals 3 goals
13 of his 39 competition goals came that way
The point is that you can make an argument about Robbie's worth to the team now, without manipulation of facts or rewriting history. It just betrays a bias and devalues any analysis.