We definitely need to do something about the ongoing influx of Irish youngsters going to Britain but that is not something that can be done overnight and isn't something that we learned for Euro 2008.
I do agree that we need to learn to play on the ground a lot better and we need to improve our player's learning in terms of technical ability. However, whilst it's not ideal that Irish kids learn the game in England, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole coaching system is overhauled in England soon what with the amount of foreign managers going to the English league. It might not make a difference as they obviously can't do anything about kids learning in the back garden or what teachers in schools teach kids about the game but it may do.
Anyway, Euro 2008 has taught us a lot about what we can do in the short term. We have a fairly technically gifted midfield but there's no point in having that if our defenders constantly bypass them by hoofing the ball up to our strikers, especially when we don't have a natural target man. Keane is better at receiving the ball at his feet and not in the air. I know our defenders aren't great passers, but how hard can it be for Trap to tell them to just play it simple to the midfield instead of booting it up field. If we continue to play long ball football then we are not playing to our strengths and if we are to eradicate this we need to ensure that the defence obeys this as most moves will inevitably start from the back.
If we are to use a 4-2-3-1 formation (a lot of people seem to think that this would get the best out of our team) then overlapping FBs are essential, as Euro 2008 proved. However, in the first post Stutts said that we need to have FBs playing on their natural side (ie. left footers on the left and right footers on the right). Whilst this can help in terms of building attacks, it's not essential as Germany made the final with Lahm playing on the left despite being right footed and he was quite good there and Germany built up a lot of attacks from that side. If Delaney continues to impress for us then he will hopefully start on the qualifiers and this won't be a problem, but I wouldn't have a massive problem with a right footer playing on the left. One thing that does worry me though is that Trap didn't seem to use overlapping FBs in his first two games. Then again, they were only friendlies and we were using 4-4-2 where overlapping FBs aren't as essential.
