You might have an argument on the skill level but not on fitness or sharpness.
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You might have an argument on the skill level but not on fitness or sharpness.
Ah now that's one game, an admittedly poor one at the start of the season when rustiness is a factor especially with the mammoth 4-month break. The standard overall is indusputably up over the last few years, and instead of there being two good teams and the rest like when Bohs/Rovers were at the top, there are now four teams as good as those sides and some decent teams outside that. The standard of players has improved, definitely.
I wouldn't make a strong case for him, nor would it remotely bother me if he was ignored, as I don't think he's presently at or near a level where he can make an impact anyway, even as back-up, but, say, if he was to go on from here, having bloomed late, and smash records at a higher level, at least we'd have him as an option. That's all I'm saying and no more; I certainly wouldn't be calling for his inclusion and certainly not over possibly-better Ireland-based players either, but I have never seen the guy play so I wouldn't be able to make a reliable comparison. Has anyone here seen Garner play?
It's a soppy token gesture to League One! :p
I think Martin has a greater awareness of the League of Ireland though than, say, Trap ever did (that's a a start, at least), so you'd hope he'd be able to make a reliable judgment on players from the respective leagues so that he can choose the best players to ensure international success, which is his role. There'd be no reason for Martin to be ignoring LOI players if they can prove themselves useful. It wouldn't be in his best interests to overlook a whole league of Irish players operating at a similar-enough standard to that at which Garner is operating, if they could genuinely make some sort of mark on the international game. Anyway, it's not as if Garner has been selected at the expense of someone more deserving just yet or anything so we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.
Can we say with certainty that the (relative) standard is on the rise? (I'm not watching live week-in and week-out so will trust the judgment of others on that.) European performances in latter years wouldn't seem to conform with that view. I'm not saying things have deteriorated massively or anything either from 6-10 years ago, but I'm not so sure there has been any consistent form recently to suggest anything other than stagnancy. Europe is a good test and we'll see how we hold up this year. We did OK last year, but the year before that was abysmal. The years prior to that were no better than what you'd expect from Irish League teams who often have players off on holidays and send their back-room staff on opposition scouting missions to YouTube!
Dundalk, Cork, St. Pat's and Rovers are all competent Euro-savvy teams with personnel involved with experience, so we do have a strong contingent this year. I'd trust those teams to do better collectively than any other Irish sides in Europe.
Ya think the LOI is a higher standard than League One? I would seriously doubt that. And saying that, League One is absolutely nothing to write home about, and neither is most of the Championship (as far as technical standards go)
I reserved judgment. Comparisons are very difficult to make without something concrete. It's why I'm using European results to gauge where I think the League of Ireland is at or has been of late.
I'm back home in Ireland at the minute, but I don't live here permanently either. What I meant was that those teams have decent pedigree or have personnel involved who know what they're up against when it comes to Europe, so I'd trust them to do better than the other teams in the league right now. Just to clarify, I'm not saying they'll do better than any Irish clubs have ever done before. What I'm saying is that if I had the choice of the four teams to represent us in Europe this year, those four would be my selection.
What do you mean by the "UEFA Cup proper"? Shamrock Rovers qualified for the Europa League group stage a few years ago. Isn't that the proper competition?
I firmly believe the top half of the League of Ireland Premier Division would comfortably sit in the Championship in England. The lower half of the Premier Division would sit around mid-table in League One.
I've watched plenty of both leagues, and with no allegiances to anyone in English football. It's a long drawn out argument, but Irish football is, in my view, 100% on the rise and is not getting the credit it deserves.
European games are no gauge of where the league is at either. St Pat's got a better result against Legia Warsaw than Celtic last season, does that make them better than Celtic, ergo League of Ireland is much better than the Scottish Premier League? No, it means St Pats got a better result than Celtic and nothing else.
There are many reasons most of these leagues can't really be compared at all, due to finances, exposure, media coverage, sponsorship and a whole host of other reasons, but in simple footballing terms, the League of Ireland doesn't get the credit it deserves and some of the high quality goals scored in recent weeks shows exactly the sort of quality in the league, for instance, Charlie Adam scores a goal from the halfway line for Stoke and it's World News in Sports...yet Greg Bolger did almost the exact same thing a week previous, with much less space to work with, and it doesn't get the same coverage whatsoever.
I have no real problem with a guy like this being put in storage in case we are stuck or he blooms suddenly, its not depriving any home grown players space in any squads, or hindering development of any other Irish players to do so after all. Lots of mentions of Eoin Doyle, but if he measures up at Cardiff then this doesn't impact on him. Chambers, Stearman, Ambrose all threw their hat in, as they are entitled to do as Irish eligible players, none have ever been selected thus far.
Also, as Tets mentioned, this was not carried anywhere outside the Irish Post paper, a paper for Irish, 2G & 3G UK based people primarily, where this would be more newsworthy, but even at that, a slow news day for them I'd wager.
Ah, you're overegging it now. Over 33 games, Dundalk of last year could have done well in League One, but over 46 games they wouldn't have had the squad. Look at how a couple of injuries decimated Pats in the return leg v Legia. The squads of even the top teams in the LOI are probably 16 or 17 players deep, with the possible exception of Cork, but the rest would need more depth to compete in England. If they had access to the same pool of players, travelling fans, income etc they could compete in League One I think but that's hypothetical.
I wouldn't base judgment on isolated results. The co-efficient is built up by taking into account all participating clubs' results over the course of five seasons and, I feel, gives a fairly reliable indicator of where we are and where we are going as a league in Europe as a result. It balances or averages out the results, which cuts out the significance of unusual or "freak" results. Of course, it's difficult to compare us with League One, which has no European representatives, but the co-efficient ranking is the only concrete competitive external comparison we have really and can tell us how we're progressing or regressing relative to other premier-level leagues around Europe.
This to me seems more realistic. Garner is knocking them in in League One. His agent wants to raise Garner's profile to get him a move and contacts the FAI. They tell the agent, as he meets the criteria, Garner could play for Ireland. When Martin O'Neill hears about this, he intially thinks he has picked up a West Indian cricketer until he googles and he realises it is in fact a League One player. That is then the end of Martin's interest.
The fortune of young recent/current LOI strikers is an interesting one. Pat Hoban wasn't very heralded as a teen and has made the move to Oxford, but it has taken him a while to register his first goal. Christy Fagan was far more heralded and seen as a future senior international as a teen but he's chosen to stay in Ireland after a good season here when he surely would have had a vast array of option in League Two at least. Then, you've Mikey Drennan who probably showed more at an older age than Fagan did at his PL club. He's very young (21 recently) and has pedigree. If he can plunder in a good tally this season then he'll be irresistible for the senior set-up maybe?
I wonder will any of the three get a senior international cap? A lot of work to do by them anyway, given that former Sligo/Shams man Eoin Doyle hasn't picked one up yet and has an awesome record in L1 but hasn't translated that to the Championship yet. Paddy Madden hasn't kicked on from his cap two years ago.
Sorry, I meant the Europa League, and in all honesty I did forget about Rovers a few years ago. They did fantastic. I would like to see other LOI teams follow suit, but it seems there is no one on the horizon at present.
I can see where Nigel et al are coming from. Dundalk are playing great stuff right now and had a great result last season in one leg, as did Pats. I can see a great vibe in at least six LOI clubs with potential for more. Yet it still falls just that bit short of the standard that is that bit better than good regional football - something that speaks for the country rather than your town.
Could you just imagine if a wealthy Irishman wrote off the FAI's debts and allowed the FAI to offer, say, EUR 5mm per year funding towards the League funded by the national team plus private sponsors. A proper tightly regulated licensing system wrt ownership criteria and financial standards is put in place to prevent opportunistic milking of the money.
From that simple point onwards the youth clubs now have a financially viable alternative to selling teenagers to crap Englosh regional clubs.
I'm not a fan of looking at the Irish rugby model as a model for Irish football because the landscapes are so different, but in a simple sense the rugby message that a joined-up fully "owned" national structure works can also be transferred to Irish football. We don't need regional franchises because there is enough local "organic" foundation in Rovers, Bohs, Pats, Cork, Dundalk, Sligo, Limerick and Derry (plus a few others) to make something marketable with better funding.
We'll never be able to keep even a relatively mediocre player like David Meyler in Ireland, but is it really daft to believe we can offer a good career to someone like Adam Rooney to stay at home if a well funded league can afford a good living? The FAI could afford the cost of servicing a strong domestic set up, bottom to top, if it had its debts written off by Desmond, O'Brien or whoever. Either could write off FAI debt in an instant.
I do wonder if DD's ownership of Celtic is actually a conflict of interest in this sense. A really strong LOI would actually compete with Celtic for support from Ireland. That's why DD's (part) ownership of the FAI debt should attract more scrutiny IMHO.
DD, O'Brien and McManus could find enough change down the back of the couch to revamp every club in the two divisions. Not that they should have to. But....
Doyle missed a one on one today. Romario he is not.
Having watched Galway Utd v Sligo Rvs Friday night I seriously doubt either of them would cut it in League Two.
I reckon Dundalk, Cork & Shamrock Rvs would compete at the top of League One though. I'm looking forward to their visits to ED Park over the summer.
In light of recent discussion, Martin O'Neill is keeping tabs on Dundalk's Dane Massey: http://talkofthetown.ie/2015/04/16/i...l-back-massey/