I was born in 1983. This is by far the weakest group of players we've had to pick from in my time watching football. Qualifying for the World Cup in 2026 is not a realistic target, never mind 2022.
I would agree as regards 2022. I think it's far to early to know what standard we might be at by the time the 2026 qualifiers roll around though. I'd say there were a lot of Irish football supporters in 1985 who thought we'd probably never qualify for anything ever.
Things can change quickly. But not quickly enough for this year's World Cup qualifiers if we're being honest.
Keane O'Shea Given Best Smallbone
get to play offs and win the semi. that would constitute "getting to the play offs as a minimum" without topping the group...Originally Posted by pineapple stu
I do think we have a realistic chance of playoffs. I think that we will be much better in March with hopefully a settled squad and no covid.
I completely agree with you about Arter or Horgan. I'd much rather play a younger player that could develop into something than a guy how has never been anything. I still think Connolly and Parrott will be great for us, and we have some very good young midfield options in Molumby, Knight and Cullen.
I'm still very positive about Kenny, I think he's done well in ridiculous circumstances. But I might change my opinion if March is a disaster
I dunno, there have been a few times over the years we'd have said similar things. The team that went through qualifying for the 98 World Cup, despite finishing second, weren't great by any means. But a few months later we had Robbie and Duff and things looked different. Drawing at home to Iceland and Lithuania and losing in Macedonia were far worse results than this group have produced.
What do you mean by "as a minimum"? As in, it's an abject failure to finish third with the current pool of players? That's cloud cuckoo land stuff.
No, that would constitute getting to the playoffs and winning the semi.
Putting covid and player pool aside. No one could possibly think Stephen kenny has done a good job to date. He might, and fingers crossed will do a good job in the future, but 1 goal in 9 games and obviously 0 wins is appalling
Considering that we finished second in the last world cup qualifiers, as fourth seeds, in a much tougher group, finishing third would be a step back IMO.
getting to the play offs, and losing the semi, by finishing second in the group should be the minimum.
Well, I disagree that it's realistically something we can currently expect, but I certainly hope for an outcome that good. Who knows? If Connolly - or anyone else - starts scoring for us soon enough then my expectations may rise quickly, but we're up against a couple of sides that would consider finishing below us an utterly disastrous qualifying. How many experienced players do we have who aren't considered past it by many here?
I'm looking at the squad and recent call-ups on wikipedia. There are three categories of player:
- Senior players I've read lengthy arguments here to drop as they're not good enough / unsuited to the system / past it: Randolf, Duffy, Christie, Shane Long, and every senior midfielder we have: Hendrick, McClean, O'Dowda, McCarthy, Arter, Brady and Hourihane.
- Players with under a dozen caps. (Only Maguire, Horgan, and Browne are close, and the flaws of the first two have been argued about extensively)
- That leaves three full backs (Coleman, Doherty and Stevens) and three centre halves (Clarke, Long and Egan)? Oh, and our great hope: Callum Robinson, 15 caps, 1 goal.
Six defenders and a forward who doesn't score is not the core of a squad that's going to scare Serbia or Portugal. That's what Kenny is working with.
My minimum expectation is that Kenny ends the campaign with a rejuvenated squad in which we've identified a starting midfield and forward line capable of creating and converting chances, while more or less preserving our defensive stats. After that, we'll actually be in a position to expect results, maybe even very good ones. If it happens right away we can hope to compete in the group, and if it happens too late, Kenny will be sacked. I think the latter is the more likely outcome, followed by an intermediate result where we start poorly / inconsistently and improve dramatically over the campaign. I would like to be wrong.
Portugal are going to top the group, possibly with a 100% record, I'm not arguing that.
The two games against Serbia will decide second spot, a draw in the opening game in March will be a decent result, and we should have at least six points before we play them again in September (beat Luxembourg, beat Azerbaijan. lose to Portugal) that game will be a must win to finish second and get into the play offs.
I see no reason to assume that we'll match their results against the rest of the group given our current toothlessness.
results like this scare me greatly, I would be suprised is we get max points off them
=
09/09/19 ECQ Azerbaijan 1 - 1 Croatia
That was the only game in that qualifying group they didn't lose - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_E...up_E#Standings
They've won six games in the last three years (Faroes twice, Latvia, Bahrain, Kyrgyzstan, and Cyprus), haven't won at home since November 2018, and are currently on a run of four consecutive 0-0 draws.
It might be tougher than people think, but we should still get six points from them
Fair enough, 1 point in their qualifying group, would suggest they are not to be feared ala Georgia
Have you seen how our squad now compares to the squad for the last World Cup campaign?
This is absolute nonsense. Seriously. There's nothing more to be said. Serbia have a player who's scored almost as many international goals in the last 5 years as the entire Irish team have. We are odds against to finish second in the group. Something that's odds against cannot be the minimum expectation.
I just hope we score a goal during the campaign.
weve got to get out and beat the serbs this time, and hope a flawless campaign from Portugal...Serbia got it hard first two games will define their fate at home.
If we got 1 goal per game in the last 7 competitive games we would have gotten to the play off final v NIR and 10 nations league points. Given our xG (washes out mouth) was 1.31 I'm hopeful of a competitive campaign.
We're keeping a few clean sheets, to be fair. The record in front of goal is obviously awful but the passing style doesn't seem to make us any more vulnerable at the back than we were playing puke football.
Agree. An apparent inability and/or reluctance to alter or tweak tactics during games is what worries me most about Stephen Kenny. Hopefully he's learned from the goalless run because his credibility has taken a massive hit. He needs improvement before crowds return or he'll get one hell of a bollicking.
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