Originally Posted by tarzan_bray
He was poor in the first half, but he was excellent in the second half. Just cos he had one bad bad game doesn't mean you can write him off as a has been, and think about how good he was 2/3 years ago. (Robbie has had two bad games, and we are not writing him off). I know Roy isn't the force he used to be, but he is still a very important factor in us qualifying
UCD sha-la-la
I am not writing him off I'm just concerned because he hasn't put in a commanding performance for United in quite a few months, he is important to have around anyway for the younger players because he is and always will be a legend in Irish football
We are the Wanderers from Bray
I think he had a bad first half but I think a lot of that was due to the lack of support he got from the other 3 in midfield.
He was isolated loads of times and made to turn and play the ball back to the defence.
The Swiss played a good pressing game and forced us into mistakes.
The Swiss weren't that good but remember they were at home with a very partisan crowd.
I don't think Keane or the rest of the team will play that badly again.
Remember the 2 Keanes and Duff have not played much football this season.
I think they can all play better than they did last night.
Taking my glass half full approach, I’m hopeful players like Keane x2, Reid & Carr will improve. Duffer was good last night but can be better. It’s too early to call Keane’s demise though he was far from his best.
Miller, if fit, might have been a good sub for Reid last night though I think he’d have been murdered in the centre.
Kilbane must now make way for Kavanagh, though I’d blame Carr more for the goal. Suicidal pass to Kilbane. Exact same error as O’Shea last year, trying to play ball rather than hoof it.
O’Brien played really well I think. I was happier with Finnan at left back than O’Shea.
Last night was probably Shay’s best game, even better than the games against Iran.
I’m hopeful there’s better to come but maybe I’ve my head in the sand.
The Swiss tactics were clearly to double mark Duff and to press Carr & Finnan as soon as they got on the ball. This was very effective but surely this opened up room elsewhere, though where exactly is hard to see on TV. You’d imagine that Kavanagh would be they type of player to pick out these openings, much more so than Kilbane.
Nothing to do with his poor display last night. We will just need to be more defensively strong. A team like France will swamp us with a line up as attacking as last night. The Swiss very nearly did. Would be very surprised if both Duff and Reid start against the French.
Thought we looked like pretty thin gruel. Defended extremely deeply. As Dunph pointed out -the Swiss weren't caught offside once in the entire game ...sure they couldn't be.
Several occasions saw Reid, Carr, Kilbane, Keane and O'Brien try to play balls out from the edge of our 18yrd box with numerous red shirts 'round them. Fcukin' attempted suicide!!!!
We should've peppering their defence which is proven to be well dodgy but couldn't string anything like enough together.
Scarey that a couple lack of full match fitness notwithstanding this is pretty much the best 11 we have
" I wish to God that someone would be able to block out the voices in my head for five minutes, the voices that scream, over and over again: "Why do they come to me to die?"
yeah maybe you're right, Finnan would offer more defensive stability down the right and Duff can drift about, you cannot really have 2 players doing that against the French, saw highlights of the Faroes game, France look nervy enough, the new manager says he is worried, I mean realistically their only dangerous players are Giuly, Pires and Henry and maybe Rothen, the others are not outstanding especially that donkey Silvestre
We are the Wanderers from Bray
Very disappointing.....have to be posistive - viera will miss our match and - both keanes and duff have not played much recently and all looked off colour
I think a draw was fair result - we had a fair few reasonable chances in first half - kilbane was attrocious last night
Added to the Swiss offsides, we didn't win one corner in the whole game, with players like Duff, Reid and Keane, who scare the sh!t out of opponents when running at them (you could add Kilbane to that list too) that's a dire statistic.
Have to agree you on the lack of urgency in Irish teams under Kerr, they seem far too laid back, large portions of last nights game were reminiscent of last years debacle in Basle insipid and unfocused, only for an inspired preformance from Given lets face it we would have lost that match.
Can anyone please tell me what style or tactic Brian Kerr uses i for one can't figure it out, on paper last nite we were playing an attacking winger system, yet the fullbacks were not supporting the wingers in the traditional sense, they were pushing the ball behind them more times than not ( Carr being most guilty leaving reid as a passenger for the most of the game) . The swiss on the other hand closed us down with great great urgency. Remember a few years ago when we went to Wembley and dominated the English but came out with a 1-1 draw when Ray Houghton should have won it for us - that was an Irish preformance full of guts and urgency something i worry we won't see under the current management.
The Russian match in september in lansdowne road left me feeling very similar to last night with swiss, no great optimism and a feeling that tactically we are all sea.
Kerr can pull of good results in friendlies and he may be a decent bloke with good man management skills, but his teams when it comes to the crunch lack character and the Killer instinct and tactically are extremely unsound..Eoin Hand mark two!!!
Agreed..Kerr seems like a nice chap, and its great to have an Irish manager born and bred..but he has had control of the team for a year now but to be honest they aren't playing very well in the crunch matches, limping to the finish line. If they don't qualify for the World Cup then sparks will fly and a new manager should be on the cards. The jurys still out as far as a lot of the players are not match fit..but tactically they left a lot to be desired.Originally posted by Beanie
Kerr can pull of good results in friendlies and he may be a decent bloke with good man management skills, but his teams when it comes to the crunch lack character and the Killer instinct and tactically are extremely unsound..Eoin Hand mark two!!!
Given obviously MOTM.
Defense ok but stayed too deep.
Kilbane & Keane woeful in centre of pitch in 1st half in particular. Keane could have given goal away but Kilbane made up for that later.
Reid was anonymous, lost ball, gave away ball, game too big for him too soon. Different playing minnows like Cyprus. Can't play him in Paris.
Duff did his best, tight marking & lack of support didn't help.
Morrison took goal well, Keabe busy & only for some dodgy offsides would have scored.
In hindsight should have brought Kavanagh on sooner as looked better when Kilbane on the wing as good some releaving free kicks from his runs.
Roy Keane has been hyped up as saviour & as predicted he not the player he was & will only get worse. He probably improves team but not by the degree many people thought.
Kerr is naturally cautious & no surprise at tactics.
France & Switzerland have dropped 2 points each already, Ireland & Israel the happiest so far. Group far from obvious. Switzerland were not great away from home last campaign & Cyprus & Israel away gonna be trickey for the top 3 teams.
btw anyone see the 2nd frnech goal at Faroes. Froward a a mile offside, ball played to wing & cross tapped home by earlier offisde forward!!! Cannot see how that can be allowed.
Seriously, are people forgetting that we were playing away from home? People's comments on this thread wouldn't be any different if we played like this at home.
Secondly, we were playing a team who got to the last 16 in Europe by winning their group (one of 10 teams to do so) and played well at the championships in a tough group except for 30 minutes against England. We also deservedly lost to the Swiss twice in the last campaign. I have to reiterate, if we were on neutral ground I would be disappointed with a draw but have a look at our away results against our two toughest opponents in the qualifiers over the years:
Switzerland 2-0 Ireland
Russia 4-2 Ireland
Holland 2-2 Ireland
Portugal 1-1 Ireland
Yugoslavia 1-0 Ireland
Croatia 1-0 Ireland
Romania 1-0 Ireland
Portugal 3-0 Ireland
Austria 3-1 Ireland
Spain 0-0 Ireland
Denmark 0-0 Ireland
England 1-1 Ireland
Poland 3-3 Ireland
Spain 2-0 Ireland
Hungary 0-0 Ireland
Belgium 2-2 Ireland
Bulgaria 2-1 Ireland
Scotland 0-1 Ireland - 1987
I can only take the following presumption from people's disappointment with that result and that is, people are expecting us to win every match with the possible exception of France. The reason I say this is because the Swiss away match, on paper, is our toughest match after the French.
May I just add. While I'm not defending Carr's performance, it was Roy's silly pass that got him booked and if he wasn't booked so early on things could have been different.
This is a quote from a nother forum:
I'm living in France and have spent the past few weeks working in Switzerland for a telecoms company. The build up wasn't that big but I have to tell you that the Swiss expected to easily win last nights game. Most papers were predicting 2-1 or 2-0 victories and the headlines this morning ran like "Not Over Yet..."
They were expecting to win last nights game and draw their away match but we upset them by taking a point. Maybe most expected all 3 points but from reading European papers, very few people outside of Ireland expected us to take any points from the game.
Exactly.France & Switzerland have dropped 2 points each already
Well we have to bear in mind that the 2 Keanes and Duff dont seem to be anything like match fit, and as such were always going to be below par last night. Im sure if we'd had a fully fit Robbie Keane he'd have put away a few more chances, as it was his comeback was rushed. Didn't Roy Keane just come back from a rib injury too ?. What worries me is Duff, he didnt look as good as usual. Its probably coz he's not getting to many games at Chelsea, which is bad for us as he'll struggle to make the Chelsea team as much this since they signed Robin.
The other thing I think last night showed was that Kilbane is not up to doing a holding/defensive midfield job. He often gave possesion away and its one thing to do that if you sprinting down the wing but its quite another to do that if youre supposed to be a holding player. In a crucial match away from home its high folly to play him in the center. Kavanagh on the other hand looked immense when he went on. He's a clever player, gives the opposition just enough aggro to annoy them but not enough to get pulled up for it. Here are his recent stats in club football, it looks like he's not been sent off in his whole career! He's not bad at free kicks too (I remember he scored a good one 2 years ago v Leeds in the cup) and takes pens for Cardiff. It looks like he really cares about doing well, so I'd start with him in the midfield next match. Shame we didnt have him last time round as im sure he'd have have done a good job vs the Hakins and the Russians.
Over the past 2 sets of matches, against superior opposition, Austria, Bosnia and NI have showed what a team of hard working, motivated but not necessarily superbly gifted players can do.
Last edited by Closed Account 2; 09/09/2004 at 11:56 AM.
May I also add. Chelsea beat Man Utd play exactly like us last night and people praised them. We "beat" (Robbie was onside) the Swiss last night away from home and the players, and manager, are getting slated.
Offside claim
Disallowed goal
Anyone catch Mr. Davros on Sky Sports during the first half?
Was sitting cheering the boys on when all of a sudden he appears on ma screen! Gave him a ring to tell him he's on and heard something about being struck of his Christmas card list? Fill me in when you're back Dav......
As for the team I think fair play to them though I get more frustrated everytime I see that Morrison header....
Sky Sports website told me kick-off was at 8 so I turned on about 7.45 and Hakin floggin Yakin had just scored!!! Disgracefull
Aw well......
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I thought that Roy Keane and Duff lacked real match fitness and this affected their second half-performances especially. Carr's performance was difficult to assess from the TV: he got the ball and kept bringing it inside to the midfield area where there were more Swiss players and Irish. He might have been doing that because Reid wasn't showing for the ball or simply because he was playing badly.
Given showed he is a truly class goalkeeper and I thought that the team as a whole did well in difficult circumstances - dodgy ref, dodgy linesman, and lots of niggly tackles from the Swiss players slowing down our play.
If that's the best Switzerland have got, we'll turn them over comfortably at Lansdowne.
Emmet
This is a quote from a nother forum:
I'm living in France and have spent the past few weeks working in Switzerland for a telecoms company.....
Cool. I'm getting quoted cross-forums
While I'll admit that from what I've read here the Swiss were pretty poor last night, I still can't understand those that expected us to easily beat them. It's funny to read posts of those that mention how bad they played in the Euro 2004 group, yet fail to remember that it was them that got through and not us. Maybe we were just unlucky but when a team is almost always unlucky against the same team doesn't it maybe hint to something other than luck being against us?
Just for info, how are the Irish papers writing it up? Good or bad?
Nice to see a few people taking the positives. We would all have took 4 points from the first two games. I'd certainly prefer to draw with the Swiss playing badly rather than drawing with them play at 100%. We all know most of the players can play better so stop worrying about the performance.
The French have just had their worst start to qualification in years. They had 40,000 at the Israel match and while we are a more attractive fixture to them, due to their bad start and the fact that they probably see the Swiss as their main rivals as they holding them for 75mins at Euro 2004 while we didn't even qualify. Therefore I can't see the French out numbering the Irish by much for than 5/3. If thats the case, the Irish will be louder and I hope the players try to think of it as a home game.
On the disallowed goal by the time the ball was actually played i think Robbie may have been a yard or two offside.
The offside one is a no brainer, cheating linesman.
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