This thread is way too early, still plenty more wheelings and dealing to be carried out!
Printable View
This thread is way too early, still plenty more wheelings and dealing to be carried out!
Says he putting us last!
True. But there's nothing else doing. So here goes...
1) Drogheda. No-one can compete with the sillt money they're spending, and I think Pat's will suffer a bit for going fully full time like Drogs did when they did it.
2) St Pat's. Not far off Drogs, but still no-one near them for spending.
3) Rovers. Will do well with up the best of the part-time players.
4) Cork. Can't tell what's going to happen there next season, but the present situation can't be helping.
5) Bohs. Don't rate Fenlon as a manager. Can see him taking Bohs backwards, assuming the Dalyer money doesn't start coming onstream soon.
6) Derry. Seems too much for Kenny to turn them around this quickly, though he's done it before. 2009, maybe. Quite possibly a Cup this year.
Gap
7) Bray. Some very good signings; almost like a best of UCD. Plus Matt Gregg.
8) Sligo. Paul Cook seems a decent manager; think some teams may pass them out this year rather than them getting worse.
Gap
9) UCD. Not going to predict us to go down obviously. :) Lost more players than I'd like, but our first XI is still as strong as last year, we have the reigning U-21 champions and this time last year we'd never heard of Ian Bermingham, Brian King, Killian Gallagher, Shane McFaul, Shane Fitzgerald and others. But I'd like to start finding out about the new generation sooner rather than later... Three down should mean we don't switch off with seven games to go. :rolleyes:
10) Galway. Struggled all last season and have signed First Division players to boost their squad. Can't see anything different this year.
11) Harps. Could well stay up; though three down makes it a lot less likely, unfortunately.
12) Cobh. Don't see anything other than relegation for them.
First Division -
1) Dundalk
2) Waterford
Gap
Gap
3) Shels? Certainly too poor to come up - much less stay up - but the First Division seems to get poorer every year as another team implodes...
4) Limerick
5) Kildare
6) Athlone
7) Longford, though could come from third to tenth depending on the players they manage to cobble together.
8) Monaghan
9) Wexford
10) Kilkenny
A League
1) UCD. :)
2) Sporting Fingal.
And I won't even pretend to have a notion how the other teams will do.
With our current squad we'l be lucky to finish in the top half.
Can't even start to predict how we'l do yet so not much hope with others.
Drogs, Bohs and Pats will be challenging for the title
Cobh, Bray, Galway, UCD and Harps will be fighting relegation.
Relegated for financial irregularities? :D
Going to go with Wexford for the asterisk also. New to the league, still a lot to learn!
More than one way to get docked points. Ineligible player would be most likely for them obviously.
Looking into my crystal ball.
1 Bohs
2 Drogs
3 Pats
4 Cork
5 Sham Rovers
6 Bray
7 Derry
8 Galway
9 Finn Harps
10 UCD
11 Sligo
12 Cobh
1st Div
Dundalk(by a mile)
Waterford
Bohs top of the league are you MAD. They will be lucky to finish 5th. Signing a clapped out Byrne and thinking that Crowe is anywhere near the player he was. No chance
1 Pats
2 Drogs
3 Cork
4 Sham Rovers
5 Derry
6 Bohs
7 Bray
8 Galway
9 Finn Harps
10 UCD
11 Sligo
12 Cobh
Surprised to see Drog's mentioned as champions by so many. 2 in a row is a very difficult thing in this league. Bohs and Pat's will be there or there abouts and you can't write off Rovers or cork either. It'll be a very interesting season me thinks
The definition of meanest defense is being discussed in another thread but Id argue that ye're lack of scorin(or going forward) is what led to having the best defense.
If ye do start playing attacking football to supply Byrne then your defense will come under a lot more pressure. You have 2 quality players there but the other 2 would be fairly suspect imo
Fair point we were negative. but we did create enough chances to win a lot of game's that we drew or lost narrowly. If we'd of had a decent striker to finish the few chances we created the drog's would have been left in our dust.
Basically if the other team dont score you cant lose, but if you dont score you cant win. that was our problem last year, too many 0-0 draws that with a decent striker would have been 1-0 wins. two points dropped on way too many occasions. I'd settle for 1-0 to the boh's all next year. won't be pretty to watch but seeing Kevin hunt lift the trophy in november will more than make up for that
Strangely enough despite being the leagues top scorer for years I never thought thats the type of player Byrne was.
It seems to me he generally needed a bucketload of chances to score one, but maybe that was just against us. The thing was the Shels team of the time created bucketloads of chances so he never had a problem with teh supply