An analytical piece on our style of play by Brian Kerr here...
'I take little pleasure or satisfaction from seeing Ireland play like minnows on the back foot constantly': http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...-36225955.html
Originally Posted by Brian Kerr
cant remember too many of kerrs senior teams taking the game to the opposition and he had much better players at his disposal.
I should not really mention it but James also helped me win however it was not an 18 game accumulator rather single win bet on
Ireland at just under 3-1 (14/5). I though that was pretty decent odds, I would have backed them to win at evens, I thought
that was a fair price for such a game, so I was pleased to get such long odds. I also has a small bet on Cyrus Christie to score
first as his goals to games ratio was much shorter than the odds offered.
I certainly did not feel we murdered the game we played good fair defensive football, I didn't even feel
it was particularly physical really.
Last edited by tricky_colour; 14/10/2017 at 11:09 PM.
What nonsense, no doubt Chris Coleman took great satisfaction from dominating possession and losing!
Possession is irrelevant, it is the result that matters.
Does he realise Hoolahan didn't play against Wales, and we won?
I was listening to his radio commentary against Moldova, and he wanted to give Wes the MOTM award over Murphy!
He made some crack about the announcement of the number of season tickets sold when the new contract was signed as well, something like "it doesn't look like the 18,000 tickets he personally sold turned up"
Last edited by tetsujin1979; 16/10/2017 at 11:01 AM.
Just recalled these comments from the other week:
Admittedly, after the deflation of the Georgia and Serbia games, I was, like Paul, very resigned and pessimistic with regard to our chances of making the play-offs, but I'm delighted to have been proven wrong and, besides, I'm surely entitled to a pardon, as, unlike Paul, I'm not the Oracle of Truth.
Good on you Danny to admitting to being pessimistic, it's amazing the value of one goal. Hopefully tomorrow brings good news in terms of the playoffs.
Brian Kerr is just a miserable sod. I put him in the ‘cranky, grumpy and bitter old man’ bracket along with Dunphy. The kind of pundits who take some pleasure out of us losing but when we get a result they’ll still focus on the negative because the win doesn’t suit their ‘narrative’.
There was a loss of faith after some really poor displays on the trot, no doubt. I'll hold my hand up. It felt like a return to the Trap era, but nothing like a good result to re-inspire the confidence.
The margins are still a lot finer than I'd prefer - I'm not saying all is rosy - but it's hard to argue with the fact that O'Neill works his magic when it really comes to the crux. As another poster said, Germany, B&H, Italy, Austria and Wales can't all have been flukes. Even if the style of play remains quite agricultural - although O'Neill, to his credit, does usually favour a higher degree of pressing and intensity than Trap did - there's at least a heart and a passion there that went missing under Trap.
The play-off draw is on Tuesday (1PM Irish time), by the way.
Are you talking about Kerr or Paul O'Shea?
I agree with what Kerr said in the article. We can be less negative without being less effective.
Kerr, like Giles, is a former Irish manager who failed to qualify for a tournament and who, as a consequence, have chips on their shoulders. Kerr didn't beat a higher ranked team home or away in a qualifier. Had some good draws ok but mixed with poor results as well and I really don't think he's in a position to criticise someone who has beaten Germany at home and drawn away, and won away in Austria and Wales and never mind the Italian result and the play off victory over Bosnia. I have no memory of us playing attacking football under him. If we needed a result, say away to Switzerland, I know who I would like to have at the helm between O'Neill and Kerr and I say that appreciating only too well that this might come back to bite me in the weeks ahead.
It's easy to say that we can be less negative and still be more effective. Putting that in to practice is another matter. I saw a few goals at the weekend where teams trying to play out from the back gave away goals or chances. We are not easy on the eye at times but as I have said here a hundred times, I don't watch my teams to be entertained. I watch them in the hope they'll win. I watch other matches for entertainment.
I suppose the main difference between Kerr and me (managerial experience etc aside) is that he is now a journalist while I am a supporter.We both look at things from a totally different perspective. The result is secondary to him - it's about the performance. To me the result is everything while the performance is a distant second. He might argue that if we did x,y,z differently, we'd still get the result. If they are the x,y,z he practiced, then we didn't get the results so it's a moot point whether he is correct.
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
I think it's a very unfair misrepresentation of an argument to suggest that people who want to see more attacking football do so purely for the aesthetics of the performance, and the result is secondary, or that people who want to see that kind of football somehow care less about the result.
You talk about the performance and the result like they are separate, but they are obviously linked. As Kerr said, there are times when there really are no options other than battening down the hatches and that's fine. But there are times when, never mind it not being the only option, it is not the most effective option. In my opinion, we are too quick to resort to that against teams that we don't need to be so fearful of. Regardless of the aesthetics of the performance, that kind of set up makes getting a result less likely, because we don't create the number of chances we could otherwise create.
Now, after the result we got in Wales, the criticism is pretty much moot for that game, but in general, it's valid, in my opinion.
I think it’s great that we can grind out these results away from home. O’Neill has taken what Trap brought to the team and added some. The away results in this campaign have been brilliant, with the exception of Georgia where the performance was dire bar a late flurry when McClean and Long might have snuck it. I think we got away with a bad spell in Serbia but we scored when we had to.
But the home form has been dire under both Trap and MON. If we can improve the home form while retaining the away for we’d be formidable. In my mind it’s fear and a lack of ambition that prevents this. Being tight and organised and nicking a goal is what we do well away but it’s also what other teams do when they come to Dublin and need another way of playing. Germany and Bosnia were our best results in the last 8 years and it’s probably no coincidence that Bosnia needed a result and Germany always play to win against teams like us.
Brian Kerr lost me when he wrote "But we are, and should be, better than that" (Iceland)
Obvious campaign shortcomings aside, beating first seeds Wales, albeit not a classic first seed team, in their acclaimed fortress, in a do or die qualification game was unprecedented in the annals of our history.
Our shortcomings were more evident elsewhere in the campaign.
Brian talks about 2 crucial elements in that game, the Joe Allen exit and the reactions to the goal scored/conceded..
I had thought the crucial elements were firmly cast with our 100% concentration, commitment and team work which nullified and eventually bedraggled Wales.
It was not unexpected that Joe Allen would eventually be the subject of very close attention in that 2nd half. He was not taken out as Brian sorta hints at,
And shucks, we scored a goal which had an added effect on the proceedings. Where was the great Ramsay during all of this?
I don't suppose the FAI could let FIFA/UEFA and the association we're drawn against tomorrow know that we'd be more than happy to generously forgo our home tie, in the interests of their convenience of course, and convince them to let us play the two legs away in our drawn opponent's country?...
I only got around to actually reading the Brian Kerr article now. From what I had heard I was expecting a bitter moan fest, of which he is well capable, but I think that was mostly accurate and well balanced.
As someone on the other side of the argument I don't think anyone is suggesting that. I think all football fans prefer to see a good footballing side. Who doesn't like watching Brazil in full flow? I don't think anyone who wants us to play better football would be happy to do so at the cost of losing games.
Where i would respectfully criticise the call for better football is that, in the opinion of this humble correspondent, it is being made despite the evidence of the generally excellent results we have enjoyed in recent years. If we weren't doing well playing like this it would be perfectly reasonable to suggest going on the front foot in an effort to improve. I might even suggest that myself. But without a downturn in results it feels like a solution searching for a problem to solve where none exists.
It isn't broke. Why fix it?
Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.
Again, I think the 'call for better football' is really a call for tactics that (I think) make us more likely to get a result.
I don't think it's a case of fixing something that isn't broken. It's about selecting the personnel and tactics that represent the best chance of getting the best result from a particular match. If the best way to achieve a result is to batten down the hatches for 90 minutes, that's fine with me. If we were trying to play attacking free-flowing football in games were it was going to get us beaten, and where defending in depth was a more suitable strategy, I'd be arguing for us to be more defensive.
My criticism is that we adopt a defensive approach even when we don't need to - tactics for some matches are too conservative, and I think we revert to those tactics too easily.
Seriously, are you not worried by the home form?
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