It used to be quite pronounced, but less now, I believe.
Think the English Indo' had some stats on it if anyone's bothered to Google.
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It used to be quite pronounced, but less now, I believe.
Think the English Indo' had some stats on it if anyone's bothered to Google.
I suppose the flip side is the team at home in the second leg have 120 minutes in their own home ground, so away goals after extra time may balance that out a bit. The home team would usually be in the ascendancy too (if we assume most cases of extra time arise after two home wins)
didnt trap say that the france play-off should have gone straight to pens after 90 mins to ensure that neither team had an advantage of playing more mins at home?
my opinion is that having the first leg at home and keeping the opposition scoreless is much more desireable than playing away first under any circumstances
Completely agree with your second paragraph jb.
15 or 20 years ago, when I first really started following football, I had the impression that playing the 2nd leg at home was preferred - i.e. playing the decisive leg at home in front of your own fans.
However, in recent years defensive tactics have turned this on its head. The way most teams are set up (and this very much includes Trap's Ireland), they prefer to keep things tight and hopefully not concede at home in the 1st leg and then go away for the 2nd leg and play on the counterattack and nick the all-important away goal. Apart from Anelka's deflected shot, this pretty much would have worked for us against France.
In short, I really think managers' and teams' preferences have shifted 180° over the years on this one.
Incidentally, I think the advantage of benefitting from away goals in extra time is supposed to compensate for the unfairness of having to play an extra 30 minutes (120 versus 90) in front of away fans.
Watching the Russia game again, we also had a huge gap between our (very flat) midfield four and the back four. Andrews and Whelan are sold to us as holding midfielders, but Arshavin & co. were constantly exploiting space behind KA and GW. This is probably the reason Ward kept stepping out to fill the gap and getting caught out of position, with McGeady covering for him heroically on a few occasions.
Watching this made me wonder if Trap really is such a great tactician... our shape was a mess against Russia, just like first time around.
Against Russia we were crying out for a 4-5-1. Perhaps even McGeady could drift in front of the Andrews and Whelan, closing the gaps between the lines and giving the opposition something to think about. Playing as we did with two isolated strikers getting no service just wastes a man and you could see Russia knew we posed almost zero goal threat. Maybe McCarthy or Keane or even Duff could do this job. We have to get away from the British Isles notion that anything less than 2 strikers is somehow not manly or not attacking enough.
If we qualify for Euro 2012 and stick with a rigid 4-4-2 with massive gaps like that against Spain or Germany, they will simply rip us a second posterior opening. With a bit more tactical cleverness we could at least frustrate such teams.
The promotion play off semi's in England have no away goal advantage. However, afair, the top finishing team in the league table has the home tie in the 2nd leg.
It worked out okay for France, Belgium and Turkey against us. Afair, only Slovakia or Slovenia bucked the trend in these play offs.
is it possible at all to catch turkey and czech republic on the co-efficient ranking if we win our last two games and they don't?
http://www.world-results.net/uefa/ranking.html#2011
Switzerland have to win their two games to qualify, so they'll stay ahead of us if they make the play-offs. The Czech's would appear to be vunerable. Turkey, similarily to Switzerland, aren't sure of the play-offs and need positive results just to make it that far, and with one game being against Azerbaijan in Istanbul, they're bound to stay ahead of us.
The best bet is for Estonia to beat the North and Serbia bottle it against Italy and away to Slovenia.
We need a minor miracle.
hmm, fair enough. i was considering the case where they win one and lose the other.
what it boils down to is that i don't know how many points are awarded for each win. i know that it works on a weighted average, but there must be a rough number for what a win means - around 250 pts?
more? fewer?
some roughish calculations seem to indicate that 2 wins for us will get us around 1100 extra pts. this means we'd probably overtake the turks if they win one and lose one, but not catch the czechs. so it makes no real odds...
It must be difficult for a Kerryman to come to terms with the mediocrity of supporting a team that is just inching its way out out of the 3rd seeds.
If Kerry were running the FAI, losing the European final would be a devastating defeat and the start of a 6 month inquiry into what went wrong.
Not at all. In Gaa, we've got as good a selection of footballers as there is in the country (even if the savages in the North of the county (around Lixnaw and Listowel) are falling behind with producing with sort of halfbred nutjobs required to compete) so success is expected, and nearly realised enough of the time.
Unfortunately in football, we've a small population in our region (UEFA), a poorly supported National League (are we the only country in Europe not to feature a home based player in our squad?), and a playing population that generally gets coached from a young age by other associations - we've no right to success, so the limited success of the Ireland team, in context, is enough.
Us and Liechtenstein!
And they don't have a league!
I love these discussions in the slow days that lead up to the start of a big 2 matches :D.
It's always the same.
I could throw out any topic in the world right now, and there would be serious, and at times fierce debate.
So I will: Anne Hathaway. Attractive As Hell or Looks Like A Horse? Your call. (Ladies do not hesitate to chime in)
Looks like a horse.
Neither. Suffice to say, I'd hit it.
But how would she fit into the "system" and does she have the "persin-al-ee-tay" and the, how you say, mentalità, eh eh, "men-tahl-ee-tay"?
Horse - but have seen her in the catwoman costume, and if it was a full mask, well that would change things to a degree.