QuoteWere they experimenting with Hoolahan's age in mind? He's not going to be available beyond this campaign, given they talked him out of retiring in the summer.Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Yeah, I think he should have played last night though as it was the tougher looking fixture. I presume he would have come on if Coleman hadn't scored when he did maybe. It's worked out okay I guess, luckily, especially with Brady absent the next day.
Were they experimenting with Hoolahan's age in mind? He's not going to be available beyond this campaign, given they talked him out of retiring in the summer.
Last night was just more of the same, don't know why we are even surprised anymore.
We always play at the level of the team we are playing against, crap against crap teams and then raise our game for the bigger ones. Its been the same for years.
3 points are important and Im still confident we will qualify from this group.
Its really not that complicated!!!
As I watched the Wales v Georgia name, I had to ponder once again why so called lesser teams can still produce players who are far more comfortable on the ball than Irish and UK players. However, put the Georgian players in the Championship or EPL and they'd be warming the bench after 3 or 4 games and then be transferred to some Russian or local team for a modest fee. Georgia outplayed Wales yesterday and looked as if they had a team of Wes Hoolahans. Wales huffed and puffed like we did against Georgia and without Bale they were very much second best.
The reason I am putting this comment in the MON/Keane thread, is that I had earlier berated MON in the thread for talking up the opposition. I was wrong. Georgia were really excellent against Wales despite going one behind early doors (as they say in football circles) and based on their performance the 3 points for us looks great although I now fear for the away leg where Austria came away with 3 points but like Georgia, they can keep the ball and can do it slightly better. It is strange though that none of their players would make it in the EPL and yet can pass a ball better than most there which tends one to believe that passing a ball is only one minor element in football. Courage, heart, determination, physicality, will to win etc are all equally important but I still have to scratch my head as to why UK based players struggle to pass a ball. If they ever get the hang of it combined with those other attributes, teams from these islands could be very difficult to beat. Dundalk are on the way to becoming one of those teams!
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
I wouldn't go with battered but Georgia were a match for Austria, though those 3 points for Austria means we have to beat Austria at home.
After just a few games this group has been turned on it's head and that type of scrap suits us .....and Mo'N (inserted for thread relevancy).
The crossbar seems to be their biggest foe at the moment. Prevented an equaliser against austria in the dying minutes, against going ahead v us, against taking the lead in a dominant 20 minute spell against Wales on Sunday.
Austria have the advantage thus far with 3 points in Georgia. Still we get them at the end of the campaign when they are usually far off the pace and lose interest, a manager who could be fired by that stage hopefully. Weiss has them playing decent, believe-in-themselves football.
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Very similar to the last campaign so far, seven points from nine and the group favourites have dropped five points early on. We've won the two games we'd have hoped to win like last time and drawn one where the majority would have been happy with a point when the draw was made (I think). Hopefully Vienna won't be our 'Glasgow moment', but knowing us it'll hardly be plain sailing.
Last edited by DeLorean; 11/10/2016 at 4:32 PM.
Georgia usually far off the pace at the end of a campaign??
In their last major home game for Eur 2016 qual they beat Scotland and played as if their lives depended upon the result.
And in their last away game, they frightened the lard out of Germany, coming close to consigning them to the ignominy of the play offs..
Anyway, we go to Georgia with 3 games left afterwards.
But I suppose that info only strengthens your point
In fairness Georgia are one of those teams that we just seem to always beat despite being up against it. The game last week and the McGeady match in the last campaign being stand outs of that.
It's like how I viewed Cyprus before Stan.
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
we generally overcame cyprus a lot easier than them though, and cyrpus have improved since the start of stans time in fairness.
@Geysir i didnt mean the last game but towards the end of qualifying, they did beat scotland and got results similar against scotland at home before, maybe they are scotlands bogey team and scotland are their certs, a bit like Italy in the 6n, but generally they seem to go off the pace towards the end. Germany did as germany needed to do in that qualifying campaign, just enough. They look a different prospect this time around as Low has set them out to qualify as quickly as possible unlike their last campaign.
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Georgia's record in qual campaigns is reasonably consistent, they have a record of being competitive to the end and at home have taken points not just from Scotland but also from better teams than Scotland. Seeing as they look a good deal better team now than previous and we will be meeting them at their peak, the odds are that we are going to have a very tough game there. Also they should have picked up a couple of wins by then.
It's different for Georgia than say for us, if our campaign was realistically over "early doors", apathy would surely set in, like we had in those dead rubber games v Cyprus and Wales.
What's in our favour v Georgia this time is not football supremacy or realistic qual hopes but history, an incredible string of victories, we are their plague.
So it stands that my humble opinion of Cyprus since Stan's time would correlate with this assertion of yours then? :P
That's a very good point to consider alright.
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
I only came across this now. Good work from the42.ie I think. I wouldn't have any recollection of the pre-Charlton years so I found it interesting at least.
Did Ireland actually play good football before the Jack Charlton era?
Certainly it was high tempo stuff under Hand but with the ball more than not on the deck. However, under Giles it was painfully slow and the crowd didn't take to it at all, especially with centre-backs losing possession in front of goal with dire consequences on at least one occasion I can remember. I think some supporters showed their displeasure by booing. It wasn't attractive football with the methodical possession playing style which could involve many passes across defence and midfield but made little territorial ground, especially in the latter part of his management career but he did early on have the great 3-0 win over the Soviets and a 4-0 over Turkey which still live in the memory.
As ever, as regards playing styles, unless you have Messi, you're better off mixing your game. The truth is that sometimes we do try and play it out from the back but 90% of the time it goes back to the keeper for the hoof. Why ? I watched Owls v Huddersfield yesterday. Two teams in the English Championship both tried to play on the floor. The latter have a German manager and the owners hired him so that the club can play the "German way" and they're doing ok. Wednesday have a Portuguese manager who also likes to play one touch football but they also mix it rather than being one dimensional. The trouble (if one can call it that), is that the Irish players are not encouraged to pass the ball. In a handful of games they have shown they can do it and despite the stick Whelan and McCarthy get, they are both well capable of it but players have to be moving and looking for the ball rather than running away from it. It's too late to build a team around Wes now but we have players, including Arter, who can pass a ball when encouraged but if we keep winning I am not that bothered but I would like us to be able to play both styles - they are not mutually exclusive. The players just need encouragement and practice.
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
Under Hand, the goalie hoofed the ball most every time. Most every time, the "continental" side would play it out from the back. Hand really had not a clue at this level to add that bit of nous when it was needed.
The best team we ever had was wasted.
I don't think whoever wrote that article actually watched a whole game and took note of what transpired.
Most everytime our goalie hoofed it up front but the players could play it out from the back.
Look at the first 15 minutes of this away game v belgium 1981, the one where the (bribed) ref was the one who was supposed to have fck us up,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...Ur0MpBfU#t=241
The players could play but there was zero effective game plan input from the manager, he even admitted this himself, no matter how good the players were they needed a better manager to guide things along.
This bit from the article in particular not just defies belief but it is just plain ignorant, Stapleton was an established international before Hand came onboard as well as being a class player
"It’s hard to say exactly why Ireland failed under Hand, though a lack of top-class player up front probably didn’t help. Ireland’s two strikers against the Soviets that day, Walsh and Robinson, were not prolific scorers at international level, managing just seven goals in 45 appearances between them. Even though a more acclaimed frontman in the form of Man United’s Frank Stapleton came into the side later on in the campaign, it was generally agreed that the squad never had any proper depth until the Charlton years."
There were 2 radically different campaigns with Hand, the second disintegrated, an excellent team under a hopeless manager.
Charton was a massive upgrade from what Eoin Hand offered but he inherited a squad good enough to qualify he just added 2 good players to it, Brady was ultimately suspended and injured.
But I regard it as banal to claim that we had to play hoofball and we couldn't play an other type of football and be successful, based on what Eoin Hand failed with.
That was 1981, we were a team composed of players who could play football (except Mick Martin) but with no coherent football plan and that was against a highly rated belgium team who were 2nd or 3rd in Europe then and despite having no plan we could still make them sweat.
To answer owl's contention about boring Johnny Giles.
Here's a home game v France 1977
where the tempo was just pitch perfect, note the goalie throws it out to the full back most every time, sometime we lost it but we took on what was then one of the best teams in the world and beat them playing football. We were maybe next to bottom seed.
I also don't abide by using Charlton as justifying hoofball or justifying we can't play it technical like. What is most always forgotten about Charlton is him saying 'i want our football to be played in their half' and when that was done it was a sight to behold, to have the other team pinned back in their own half.
Wembley 1991
I don't deny that there were some great results under Giles but some of the play eventually became very sterile and boring and hence the boos from the crowd. It is interesting that you exclude Mick Martin from among those who could play football. I believe that it was he who gave the ball away against the Swiss in 1975 while playing a pass across the box, a game we lost 1-0 I think.
Don't forget Jack's team were also the bottom or second from bottom seed when he first came to the party. When people say we could have won dis, dat and d'udder if Charlton had played a different style, England played the passing game with, by and large, mostly better players and they won....? In a group with England, the Dutch Masters and the Soviet Union, we were a few minutes away from a Euro Semi-Final. Would we have beaten England, drawn with the Soviets and narrowly lost to the Dutch playing a different style ? I don't believe we would but agree that it is just speculation. Could we have played possession football with a back 4 of McCarty, Moran, Morris and Houghton ? We might but I would have been looking at it through my fingers
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
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