Coleman out
Coleman out
I would play 3 guys a 10 plus parrott roaming and a 9
I would blood that kid in Switzerland as a 10 or this McGrath. 3 mids and 4 at a back. I like 3 at the back bit it needs a lot of práctice any tiny mistake as in serbia and u get a goal down or a one on one chsnce
Dont know but i sense he will be a great football coach once he gets 40. He is coaching football matherial brains and work ethic
Spinning discussion on the Hungary game off into its own thread
I like it. 4-4-1-1 ideally with one of the midfielders ( at least ) being able to get down the wing and cross the ball. O’Dowda can do that but he is always injured / unavailable.
Brian Clough’s whole career was based on 4-4-2 with at least one midfielder / winger able to get down the wing and cross a ball. He done very well, very well indeed.
That kid in Switzerland is 23, four years older than Parrott, and has a broken bone in his foot
When you're a small nation, like we are, with limited playing resources, I think the players available to you more or less dictate the formation and the way you play, or at least it should do.
Given our surfeit of centre-backs, the availability to us of players capable of playing as a wingback (Coleman, Doherty, McNamara, Christie, Manning, Stevens, McClean) and shortage of wingers of adequate standard, allied to our obvious weaknesses in midfield and toothless attack I think this more or less demands we play a 3-5-2, or at least a variation on this theme.
It offers us defensive solidity, the ability to play our best players, and in their natural positions, numbers in midfield and, importantly, allows us to play two strikers.
Kenny and his seemingly dwindling number of devotees seem to believe this in fact should be reversed, that based entirely on ideological dogma we ought to play a certain predetermined way, regardless of the players we actually have and with a system and style of play often at odds with those players' capabilities.
It would obviously take some work to make a back-3 system work effectively, and I understand it has been tried a couple of times before to little effect under McCarthy and Kenny, but a number of our players are used to this formation at club level and I think it would be well worth persisting with.
My team for Hungary would be something along the lines of...
Kelleher;
O'Shea, Duffy, Omobamidele;
Doherty, Knight, Cullen, Manning;
McGrath;
Parrott, Idah.
It gives some of the players who didn't start in the poor performance against Andorra game-time. Manning provides reasonable set-piece delivery in the absence of Brady/Hourihane and in-form McGrath gets a chance to show what he can do. Omobamidele and O'Shea are both good in possession and should be comfortable in this system. Doherty plays in his best position and Idah and Parrott should provide a complementary partnership.
With 4-3-3 the front 6 need to be of very good quality to worry the opposition enough to basically keep them defending a lot. We don’t have a front 6 of that quality.
Stephen Kenny, welded to his dogmatic preference for 4 at the back....played 3 5 2 for our last two compettive games.
He is due a lot of critisism, but i dont get having a go at him for not trying something that he has tried (with minimal success) in our most recent compeitive games.
I accept that Kenny has used a back three and and made reference to this in my post. And clearly our problems run a great deal deeper than simply individual systems. I think my point was more to do with the logic of persisting with the formation based on the players available to us and, more importantly, allowing the players available to us to determine our style of play and formation rather than the other way round. We need to be consistent with what we are trying to do. We reverted to a 4-4-2 against Andorra and, taking into account the standard of opposition, it was as bad as we've seen under Kenny.
For what it's worth I thought the 3-5-2 as used in the away game with Serbia showed some promise, with a penalty call going against us and an iffy goalkeeping performance serving to undermine us. Set against that, the way we played against Luxembourg at home was horrific. It's about finding the correct balance.
A quasi-irishman got the pirates out if the gaol
Are we playing a match tomorrow ~ ~ Tis very quiet in here !
I think many of us are quietly worried about it tbh. Hungary aren't going to tire like Andorra did.
I'll tweak my suggested team from the tail end of the Andorra thread (assuming still playing 4-3-3) as Coleman's out, which means -
Kelleher
Doherty
Egan
O'Shea
Manning
Cullen
Knight
Molumby
Parrott
Idah
Horgan
This is on sky, yeah?
If anybody wants to PM me a link I'd appreciate it.
Is McGrath not more an attacking player? Would be more a switch for Horgan I'd have thought. Could be wrong though. I don't think SPL is really international level, but then we're playing third tier players and they're not really international level, so I guess what's the worst that could happen giving him a run.
At the start of his tenure the worry was about holding onto the ball and finding scoring opportunities, we were more than blunt up top.
Now 12 games in the bigger worry for me is how poor we are defensively , conceding against all sorts of opposition and more than stoppable goals. It's a big worry because defensively is where we are strongest. I want to see a few clean sheets, it wouldn't be progress as such but at least we'd be back at the start again.
Yeah. We are there. A Crystal jaw. Jamie McGrath to start today and Horgan. Gk Kelleher. Bazunu made more mistakes than Travérs atm
I would go with 3-6-1
Kelleher
Duffy
Egan
O'Shea
Doherty
Molumby
McGrath
McClean
Horgan
Parrot
Collins
Manning as midfielder woud be very good though. But if I playa Mc Grath I would go with McClean to bring some experience.
A crystal jaw is unbreakable
Gotta say, this concerns me no end. Bazunu has made far too many mistakes for us so far to be in the running for the game in Lisbon. Yes, he's young and improving, but he's an academy player who was dropped by Rochdale, whereas Kelleher has played (and done well) in front of the sort of crowd that we would hope (in a way) will be at the Portugal game.
I've mentioned this on twitter, does giving a player who didn't play against Andorra a run out against Hungary send a strange message? Say Kelleher does come on tonight - does that mean he's not good enough to face Andorra, but he is good enough for Hungary? Maybe Omobamidele is a better example - he wasn't in the matchday squad to play against the part timers in Andorra, but he is able to play against Euro 2020-bound Hungary?
It's nit picking, I know, but thought it was something that deserved a mention
Keepers are a bit different I guess - it would have been fine (for me) to give Bazunu the Andorra game and Kelleher the Hungary one as both keepers need time, but (for me) Kelleher is ahead of Bazunu and needs the better test.
Is there anyone else strongly rumoured to be featuring tonight?
I do think being 1-0 down against Andorra after an hour may well have stymied sub plans.
I really dont think there is much difference, neither of them are ready yet, and I'm not sure either of them will be anyway. I can't open the link but I'm guessing its about him potentially starting the Portugal game? Does he offer us anymore than Randolph from a building attacking play? Not sure he does, he certainly doesn't offer us more security in goals, so I'd stick with Randolph personally.
I’d certainly be in favour of giving Kelleher a game. Like if you were curious about how Bazunu would handle a crowd or wanted him to adapt to a crowd, you’d have started Kelleher against Andorra and Bazunu against Hungary. Anyway, maybe Kelleher isn’t at 100% due to that injury or something...
Personally I’d like to see a new boy or two get a bit of game time. Couldn’t really tell much from McGrath on Thursday. Ogbene for example.
Ogbene was carrying a knock on Thursday, I reckon he would played otherwise.
Should hopefully see him get a run tonight. We're very short of right-footed wingers.
Yeah, agree neither of them can really be said to be ready at the moment. And yep, Hungary want to get as many people into the game tonight (15k capacity ground), and it seems a good way to prep a keeper for Portugal in the event that Randolph isn't fit or has dropped back (cos he's not getting games either at the moment of course).
Quote from Kenny is - "I’m Caoimhín’s biggest fan, he played in the under-21 team ten times and had he been fit in March (v Serbia) he would have started, it’s fair to say. Gavin Bazunu has come in and just been absolutely excellent. Sometimes you take your chance" - but Bazunu hasn't been "absolutely excellent". His decision-making has been really poor at times, and this in games against not-great sides who haven't put us under a huge amount of pressure. Unless Kenny is seeing something else in training that we're not (such as, as elatedscum suggests, Kelleher not being match fit because he's just back from four months injured) then that's the kind of comment that would really cause me to question the manager to be brutally honest.