In the stadium that's what all those around me thought. Looking at it on tv though he was unsighted I think. If not he was sluggish. The third goal was right in the corner. Nice finishing by him though ;(Originally Posted by geysir
Given seemed to go down in installments for the 1st and 3rd goal. Surely isn't fit.
In the stadium that's what all those around me thought. Looking at it on tv though he was unsighted I think. If not he was sluggish. The third goal was right in the corner. Nice finishing by him though ;(
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
To be fair over the 4 yrs in charge I cant remember to many good performances even against average teams. The style of football is a joke, I'm not after barca football just at least one midfielder who can pass. Trapattoni is bein found out big time now. We played in a poor group to qualify that's just a reality and I believe that any other team other than Estonia would have knocked us out of the qualifying. A manager who speaks of little details knows little to nothing about other players in his squad due to playing the same players in friendly matches, what does this achieve? His 4 4 2 is extremely flawed, whelan and Andrews neither create nor are they players who break up play similar to Scott Parker for example. He's time and era as a manager has come and gone, why bring a player in a squad who you have no intention of using. If Dalglish time is over you can be sure Trapattoni's is too
France are actually ranked 14th - 6 places behind Croatia who are 8th in the world. Sorry we didn't play them off the park for you. We fought back to 1-1 after the blow of conceding an early goal and only went behind to a goal that should have been disallowed. Didn't look "totally and utterly" out of our depth to me.
I doubt if we are the worst team. I'd say the Poles and the Czech Republic are around the same standard.
This is the biggest let down in your 26 years of watching Ireland? Let's see, that goes back to 1986. I think you must have had your eyes closed for a lot of the games during that period ! I can think of far greater disappointments than this during that period, not least losing play offs.
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
Hey - there is no need to get snippy - I was paying you a compliment. You make out that people who criticise the manager want Steve Staunton to re-take the reins immeadiately. When you see the players give 100% and come up short, people are going to criticise the manager - whether you have complete faith in him or not.
And nobody is throwing in the towel - least not the players - and I'm not giving up on the players either. I think they will give 100%, and I'm also 100% sure that Il Trap will leave no stone unturned in his efforts to do as well as we possibly can over the next 6 days.
However we have a right to say that getting results against two of the strongest teams in the world, while certainly possible, is improbable given what we have seen from this team over the past few years.
But with a little luck and some better defending maybe we can achieve the quarters, so it is with more hope than confidence I say: Come on you boys in green.
A lot of Trap's critics wanted Paul Jewell and other English minnow club rejects appointed.
I said before you can have either good football or good results with this team. You can't have both. Our record is a very impressive one in recent years, and with that record, we have earned the right to be in these championships and face big teams. Nobody doubts that getting results in the next two games are very difficult, but our campaign is not over. One point on Thursday is enough to go to Poznan and decide the group there.
NL 1st Division Champions 2006
NL Premier Division Champions 2010
NL Premier Division Champions 2011
Keep Tallaght Tidy, Throw your rubbish in the Jodi
Ten Years Not Out
Ah, mypostian reality...
The actual reality is that Croatia had been much the better team for 15 minutes before they re-took the lead; that goal was coming. The game felt similar to Shamrock Rovers' euro games - you could try convince yourself that Rovers were fighting back in the second half at times, but really the opposition always had another gear if and when it was needed.
The other reality is that if we lose to the world and European champions tomorrow night, we're out, almost regardless of the result in the other games. Of course the players shouldn't be throwing in the towel - we'll only get hammered then - but we're clearly not going to go through short of a miracle.
On the plus side, Gary Breen was the analyst on Singaporean TV.Paul Dempsey was host and Ray Houghton has a column in the local paper. Feel right at home!
I think both of them play much better football than we do.
Judging on the games I saw yesterday (Poles v Russia, Czechs v Greece) both are far superior to us.
Sadly Ireland were probably the worst team that have played.Taking our biased hats off ! Who was worse ?
Poland (population 40m) brought on a Celtic squad player as a sub, whereas we can afford to ignore the merits of a Celtic first team player.
I don't subscribe to that our tactics are awful, it's more the application and discipline that's wanting. Players at FB and CM still need to have a technical ability to make our game work.
Trap hasn't succeeded in getting adequate players to perform at a proficient level at playing this game and if we do manage it, we don't do it with consistency.
He has repeatedly claimed that now we have the mentality and personality to play this game only to be shot back, saying that in such a such a department we were wanting. I don't mind his loyalty and persuading moderate players that they have a hidden treasure of ability hidden inside them.
There is something not clicking and I don't know enough about the game to figure out why moderatly adequate players can play in other national teams and perform adequately
and similar standard players for us at times look clueless and bereft of technique.
Sweden are probably worse than us.
Lucky for us they are in our WC quailification group!
Better football - which is better football: A punt up the field, a knock on by a forward and his mate runs on and scores or 4 or 5 one twos resulting in a goal? Perhaps the latter by accepted standards but I would prefer to talk about effective football. If we had the Poles and Czechs in our group along with Greece, I would say we would play the more effective foolball of the 4 and would be confident of getting out of the group.
The trouble with our group is that we are in with some of the best teams in the world which seems to have passed over a lot of people's heads. When expectations are unrealistically high people feel let down when the result doesn't go their way. We were the 4th seed in a group of 4 and missed the two weaker home nations. The bar was also set high by our previous qualifications for Finals but if we look at Scotland's record in such competitions, that might people a more sobering view of what we have achieved in the past.
Anyway, let's be positive about tomorrow and remember Gerry Armstrong did it so why can't we?
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
I think Sweden were spectacularly limited, the entire team, with the exception of the sub Wilhelmsonn, looked to have feet of clay.
I think people are underestimating Croatia, they went to Turkey and won 3-0 in the play-offs, the Turks biggest competitive home defeat in since at least 2006. To put it into context the much feted Spanish only beat Turkey 2-1 in Istanbul thanks to a dodgy penalty and 92nd minute goal.
We're comfortably a fourth seed team - it would be silly to say we're one of the top 12 teams in Europe at the moment, but after a defeat against a team which is certainly a top 10 (and possibly a top 8) European team I wouldn't say we're clearly the worst team. If we were in group A or group D I think we would be able to match the Czechs and Greeks or the Swedes and English.
What you have to bear in mind is the lack of tournament experience our team has. Every other nation at Euro 2012 has been to a competition within at least the last six years.
Russia (2004, 2008), Czech (2004, 2006, 2008) Greece (2004, 2008, 2010) Poland (2006, 2008)
Italy (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), Spain (same), Croatia (2004, 2006, 2008).
Germany (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), Holland (same), Portugal (same), Denmark (2004, 2010)
France (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), England (2004, 2006, 2010), Sweden (2004, 2006, 2008), Ukraine (2006).
No other team has had such a gap since being at a tournament, and there are a lot of teams that didn't qualify who have more tournament experience (Serbia, Turkey, the Swiss). Even if you take Ukraine, the closest example to us in terms of qualification for a tournament, theyve got quite a few key players who were at both 2012 and 2006 (Tymoschuck, Shevchenko, Milyevski, Pyatov, Nazarenko, Husev, Rotan, Voronin) we just dont have this experience.
I don't want to be all negative on the back of a bad night's work but I do think it's hard not to think that for some reason - as Geysir says - things aren't clicking. Part of it is simply that we froze on Sunday, simple rabbit in the headlights stuff. Even despite our primitive football we can play better.
On the positive side, we won't get physically bullied in our next 2 games as much as Croatia did.
As I see it having good mobile full backs is key to adding fluency to our team. A modern full back is defensively good, able to patrol the wing and, importantly, develop play by interplay with CM. This is missing from our set up. Kelly is a more natural full back than JOS I think, Coleman is WIP.
Gibson is far more comfortable on the ball than the other two, but yet I can see why the other two get picked. However, I thought we played well against Bosnia and I think Gibson was the root of that.
It's not all gloom but without imaginative change I don't see any imporovement in the quality of our play.
Anyone who remembers me from my soccercentral.ie days will remember that I used to bang on about 3 at the back. Since Irwin, Kelly, Stan, Harte and Finnan all went off the scene I've been underwhlmed by our full back options but we're OK at centre-back. So, if you don't have full backs, why persist with inadequate ones?
So:
--------------------GK----------------------------
-------------JOS--Dunne--SSL--------------
Coleman------------------------------------McClean
--------------------Whelan-------------
-------Gibson-------------------Andrews
-------------Keane-------Walters-----------
The thanks button has disappeared - so thanks to owls fan and cfdh for those last 2 posts, some good stuff in there. But I still think we're one dimensional and we don't need to be!
That formation certainly worked for Italy against Spain. But he will basically stick to 4-4-2 and that's probably fair enough at this late stage. You can morph the 4-4-2 to look like that when Spain have possesion, back four (plus Whelan\Andrews) narrow and tight. Wingers a bit wider to cover Spanish fullbacks. Whatever formation\personal it won't save us if we start as we did last Sunday. But I agree with many of the comments that talked about nerves etc. so hopefully we can give a better account of ourselves tomorrow.
Oh come on. Poland played both effectively and technically profieciently. They fought back well, and exerted their game on Russia in a way I don't think we could. When did we ever have Russia on the back foot apart from when they (badly - what a dumb penalty to concede for example) defended a 3-0 lead?
I think Ireland struggles against eastern europeans in particular because as well as being technically strong, they tend to employ orthodox forwards and can deal with us at the back. Latins are also technically strong but often go with fancy-dans up front and I think we can keep that sort of team at bay easier, and at the back they are sometimes less physical.
No one is demanding 4 or 5 one-twos! I agree that you don't get extra points for artistic merit, and I've always said that, but if you can't retain the ball you're up against it against anyone.
Last edited by Stuttgart88; 13/06/2012 at 12:21 PM.
You can see here Shay was unsighted for the first goal:
"Jacques Santini...will be greeted in every dugout of the country by "one-nil, one-nil" - Clive Tyldsley, 89th minute of France-England June 13, 2004.
"Ooooohhhh Nooooooo" Bobby Robson 91st minute.
Yes but even allowing for that, Shay's dive looked uncharacteristically sluggish.
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