Wales V Republic of Ireland - Cardiff - 6th September 2018 - UEFA Nations League

[Stuttgart88]

Luckily for Wales they play us again!

I remember we were buzzing after Stan's first match yielded a 3-0 home win over Sweden. That feeling didn't last long though. Was it Chile and Netherlands next?

Were we Giggs' Sweden?

[geysir]

The only thing I'd differ from what Stutts wrote earlier is that I don't think it's so crucial not to be relegated down to (Scotland's level) League C. These league games would have been great for a new coach to prepare for the Euro qualifiers, playing against quality opponents at a competitive level but not do or die. Unfortunately as Dylan Thomas might have written, we are left to rage against the dying of the light instead of witnessing something new growing.

When this nations league was finally launched I didn't see the possible benefits, I thought the structure was overly complicated. But now i'm sold on it, why not ditch the friendlies altogether and have a 4 team group?

[geysir]

Don't get the clamour for Mick. There must be a reason why no English club wants him nowadays. He's not known for particularly open, expansive football. And Kerr isn't known as a attacking, free flowing coach either. His greatest "success" was with the Faroes, when all he had to do was park the bus again and again and again. Even when losing, so they could keep the score respectable.

That doesn't mean the current coach should still be there. Surely there must be a coach out there who understands the fundamental requirements of his job, can get the team organised without needing to park the bus, and doesn't fly off the handle with the media.

Kerr was just perfect for what the Faroes needed then. Presently, Faroe's football is in a much better place.
The current Faroes coach is Denmark's Lars Olsen and I really like cut of his jib,. I think it's very impressive what he's achieved with that team over the years. He could be had for half of what Roy is being paid.
But I'd have him full time working with all things football in Ireland, have him work 9 to 5 every day, just like anybody else.
I just don't get this international coach extravagance, of a huge salary being paid out for what is a one day a week job.

[mypost]

When this nations league was finally launched I didn't see the possible benefits, I thought the structure was overly complicated. But now i'm sold on it, why not ditch the friendlies altogether and have a 4 team group?

It is complicated. Trying to work out who qualifies for the Euros at the end of the next qualifiers, will be head wrecking. And the playoff in 2020 is just plain wrong. If you haven't got through the normal group phases, you should leave those who have, get on with the rest of the competition.

Really think the 3 team groups have to be dropped. The 4 team groups are a much fairer way of deciding a team's fate.

[OwlsFan]

I couldn't have put it better myself. Except I still go through the torture of watching on TV.

It'll be a long time before I pay to watch or follow the Irish team again.

Rats-Ship-a.jpg

A football team, national or club, should be for life and not just when it is doing well.

First competitive away defeat in how long ? Back to back with the Danish game of course makes it hard to stomach but not long ago we won in Austria and Wales under the same management and got a hard fought draw in Denmark. Have the wheels now come off ? Possibly but I think the next two competitive games at home will decide the management's fate and MON is entitled to that I believe.

The comparisons to Iceland do irk me because for every Iceland there are numerous other countries of similar size or bigger than us who are failing to qualify, not to mention the Hollands and Italys of this world.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how we get on against Poland and what sort of formation we adopt but I don't think we should sit off like we did against Wales. Denmark pressed them and they didn't look half the side they were against us.

[Stuttgart88]

Rats-Ship-a.jpg

A football team, national or club, should be for life and not just when it is doing well.

First competitive away defeat in how long ? Back to back with the Danish game of course makes it hard to stomach but not long ago we won in Austria and Wales under the same management and got a hard fought draw in Denmark. Have the wheels now come off ? Possibly but I think the next two competitive games at home will decide the management's fate and MON is entitled to that I believe.

The comparisons to Iceland do irk me because for every Iceland there are numerous other countries of similar size or bigger than us who are failing to qualify, not to mention the Hollands and Italys of this world.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how we get on against Poland and what sort of formation we adopt but I don't think we should sit off like we did against Wales. Denmark pressed them and they didn't look half the side they were against us.

While I think you're right to an extent wrt Iceland, I think the key to the Iceland and NI comparisons is that at the very least organisation, structure and good team selection are important. They guarantee nothing, but do improve chances. I think current management are failing on all 3 counts, so the chances of getting good results are affected. If this management team does turn things around I'll be amazed because all I see are the same mistakes being repeated.

[IsMiseSean]

A football team, national or club, should be for life and not just when it is doing well.

This is why I didn't make the grade over on ybig - they knew I wouldn't be prepared belt out the Fields of Athenry in the 90th minute when we're 3-0 down to Denmark next month.

[Jovial Rambler]

If the next two competitive home games are to decide MONs future then hes gone. Look at his competitive home record against teams at similar level to ourselves. Denmark Serbia Wales Austria Poland Scotland...

[mypost]

First competitive away defeat in how long ? Back to back with the Danish game of course makes it hard to stomach but not long ago we won in Austria and Wales under the same management and got a hard fought draw in Denmark. Have the wheels now come off ? Possibly but I think the next two competitive games at home will decide the management's fate and MON is entitled to that I believe.

It's the 4th defeat in 5 games, 5 defeats in 12 months too, 3 of them away from home. So if the wheels are not coming off, when?

The latest ruse to explain the results is, the old reliable that has been used by every Ireland coach, without exception, to explain every failure since 2002. "We don't have the players". And after every failure, by choice or by design, would you believe, we find players ready to turn up and give their all for the country.

As for the current "we don't have the players" whine, he often names 30+ man squads for international windows, and a quick look will show that we have more than our fair share. Caoimhin Kelleher, Enda Stevens, Conor Masterson, Daryl Horgan, Sean Maguire, Graham Burke to name a few waiting in the wings, all before we mention Arter and Rice, along with all the other regulars. Some of them have been ignored, some of them have been dismissed by this coach as "not good enough". There's the LOI here to tap into if necessary. A massive pool of players who would give their arm to play for Ireland, some with English club and/or European match experience. But that's also ignored. You can argue they're not good/experienced enough, but the players are there, it's just a question of finding them, calling them up, bringing them in, capping them, and taking them to the next level. All those resources available and what does he do? Lament the loss of the O'Sheas and the Hoolahans instead.

That's not the biggest problem though. The fact that those who do show up are badly trained, badly coached, have no idea what role they should play, or even what tactics to employ on the pitch, is stuff you wouldn't expect from an amateur coach, let alone one with 30 years of experience. Kelleher works on the training ground with Klopp every day of the week, double training sessions every day that sort of thing. He may not play very often on the pitch, but he's learning so much from training with world class players which will stand to him as his career goes on. So he must think he's at Butlins when he's at an Ireland training camp, there's so little "work" done. Mondays are apparantly, rest days in the camp. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Now the sht has hit the fan, little things are becoming massive issues, as is usually the case. And he's having to answer hard questions that he doesn't like. We had 9 months and several friendlies to prepare for the trip to Wales, to get ourselves prepped and ready to hit the ground running. Instead we hit the ground with a bump, 1 down in 5 minutes, 3 down in half an hour, 4 down inside an hour. So whatever work was done was a complete waste of time. This is a team that hadn't beaten us in over 25 years, they're not world beaters by any stretch, and yet we played like a pub team. So when that's the case, the management should have to answer tough questions. When it's the 4th defeat in 5 games, he shouldn't be surprised if those questions are tougher than normal.

[paul_oshea]

mypost should we get trap back. YOu went very quiet for a long time after the dour, drab, uninspiring, loathsome horrible football we played under trap, when the more knowledgeable few of us on here were wanting him gone a long time.

I didnt think Trap was a failure according to you, so why is it now every manager since 2002 about not having the players, i really only remember that starting under Trap, or at least only ever mentioned more than once.

Interesting your 3rd paragragph given what i just said above. I thought we just played practice first 11 v anyone else matches under trap in training, didnt realise we actually did any. It certainly didn't show on the pitch.

[paul_oshea]

It is complicated. Trying to work out who qualifies for the Euros at the end of the next qualifiers, will be head wrecking. And the playoff in 2020 is just plain wrong. If you haven't got through the normal group phases, you should leave those who have, get on with the rest of the competition.

Really think the 3 team groups have to be dropped. The 4 team groups are a much fairer way of deciding a team's fate.

I am still a little confused, as I find this misleading. https://www.uefa.com/uefanationsleag...3.html?iv=true

League B
Group B1: Slovakia, Ukraine, Czech Republic
Group B2: Russia, Sweden, Turkey
Group B3: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland
Group B4: Wales, Republic of Ireland, Denmark

Teams have been split into four groups of three.
The four group winners are promoted to League A, with the four sides that finish bottom relegated to League C for the next competition to be played in 2020.
The top four ranked teams that do not qualify for UEFA EURO 2020 will enter a play-off in March 2020, with one finals place on offer

The four group winners are promoted to League A
The top four ranked teams that do not qualify for UEFA EURO 2020 will enter a play-off in March 2020

That is mutually exclusive, suffice to say that the 4 winners are not necessarily the top 4 ranked teams in that League by this point. This could be interpreted wholly different, for example the highest ranked teams within that league that go into the playoff. That seems like a bit of a farce, I agree, you could win your group, fail to qualify for the play-off and end up with nothing. And now you've made winning the next group league harder.

My guess is they have been vague on purpose here and what they really mean is the 16 winners all enter into a playoff "lottery", so if the top 8 have already qualified it goes to 9, 10, 11, 12 if in that order they are the next ranked highest, if say 16 was ranked higher than 12 then its 9,10,11,16 but that's never going to happen, so it still cuts out the middle man. AT first I believed this was to give smaller nations a chance to qualify, i was sure i read that somewhere too.

[pineapple stu]

If you win your group but not your league, you don't end up with nothing - you are promoted to the higher level and more prestigious games.

From memory, if Wales and Denmark qualify for the Euros, we would end up in the play-off for the League B Euro spot even if we get relegated. The Euro qualifying will be completed by the time the play-offs come around. So ideally, the four play-off teams will be the top team in each group not to have qualified for the Euros through regular means.

[EAFC_rdfl]

mypost should we get trap back. YOu went very quiet for a long time after the dour, drab, uninspiring, loathsome horrible football we played under trap, when the more knowledgeable few of us on here were wanting him gone a long time.

I didnt think Trap was a failure according to you, so why is it now every manager since 2002 about not having the players, i really only remember that starting under Trap, or at least only ever mentioned more than once.

Interesting your 3rd paragragph given what i just said above. I thought we just played practice first 11 v anyone else matches under trap in training, didnt realise we actually did any. It certainly didn't show on the pitch.

Wonderful

[paul_oshea]

If you win your group but not your league, you don't end up with nothing - you are promoted to the higher level and more prestigious games.

From memory, if Wales and Denmark qualify for the Euros, we would end up in the play-off for the League B Euro spot even if we get relegated. The Euro qualifying will be completed by the time the play-offs come around. So ideally, the four play-off teams will be the top team in each group not to have qualified for the Euros through regular means.

Are you sure about this, their video shows that the 16 group winners go into the play-off, the text above doesnt.

I think they are vague on purpose.

[pineapple stu]

Hm. I see the video, and yeah, it does seem to say what you say.

But UEFA's original press release was quite clear - "The top four ranked teams [in each league] that do not qualify for UEFA EURO 2020 will enter a play-off in March 2020, with one finals place on offer". The original video backed that up as well.

So - I'll have to go to "not sure" now.

[Stuttgart88]

But if any of the 16 group winners also qualifies automatically by virtue of a 1st or 2nd place in the main qualification groups, then the play-off teams are determined by Nations League performance.

Nations League: finishes March 2019. Each division has a semi final (4 teams) and a final (2 teams obviously)
Normal qualifying: 10 groups, 20 qualification places (out of 24 in total). Top 2 in each group qualify. 4 teams must qualify via what used to be the play offs.
These "play offs" in March 2020 are a series of semi-finals (one leg each) and finals. It's very likely that actual qualifiers from the traditional route will have been among the division semi-finalists and finalists in the actual Nations Leasgue in March 2019, so a new set of divisional semi-finals will be arrived at, via "ranking" which I think means by looking across the 4 groups who has most points, then GD, GS etc.

So:
Winning or having a good run in the NL Division B would by itself be a nice thing but winning Division B also guarantees a play-off semi final as back-up for not qualifying automatically
Doing well in NL Division B is useful because you accrue ranking points which are used to seed the actual European Qualification draw
Doing well in NL Division B is also useful because it maximises your chance of a March 2020 play-off if you're lucky enough to see your group winner qualify automatically

Edit, I changed a bit of above and now adding:

UEFA:
(1) If a group winner has already qualified via the European Qualifiers, then their spot will go to the next best-ranked team in their league (so not group)

(2) If a league does not have four teams to compete, the remaining slots are allocated to teams from another league, according to the overall UEFA Nations League ranking."

What I think (1) is saying if that in League B (our league) any group winner that qualifies automatically is taken out of the possible play-off equation. So across all 4 groups in league B another team is bumped up based on looking across all 4 groups and seeing which team has got most points, then GD etc. So even if we come 3rd but Denmark and Wales qualify automatically then their spots will go to the two teams with most points in all of the 4 League B groups. It's unlikely this would be a back-door route for Ireland.

But I'm a bit unsure of what happens in (2) above if, say, League A does not have 4 teams to form a play-off semi-final, i.e., all 12(?) qualify automatically? Does this open up more places from League B, and so on down the chain? I think so, and it'd suggest to me that finishing second in any group in League B would very likely get you a play-off place because you'd have to think most of the 12 League A teams will qualify automatically and most of the remaining 8 automatic places will come from League B. So you only have to be in the top 4 of the remaining League B teams.

I haven't seen the video.

[pineapple stu]

I suppose the caveat is that if you take out the four group winners in League B, who is the next best team if, say, Wales have won our group and also qualify for the Euros? Is it the team that finished behind Wales in our group? Or is the best runner-up across the four groups? In that case, if Denmark are the best runner-up and have also qualified for the Euros, would the spot pass to us as third, or the next best runner-up after Denmark?

I think the original video - which is different to one I'm seeing more recently - was reasonably clear on that, but I can't remember what it said.

[shakermaker1982]

It will be based on standings across all the teams in the League (well that is my understanding).

If Iceland have a terrible Euro 2020 campaign, the only team from A not to qualify & also finish bottom in standings they would still have a playoff with the next ‘best teams’ from B (who also haven’t qualified). That would make up the spot for Group A. Being in B means even if we have a shocker in the 2020 qualifiers there is a very good chance of getting a playoff shot.

[samhaydenjr]

OK, I understand how it works now and I'll explain it with an example. First, though, I want to note that, contrary to what Stuttgart88 said, there are no Nations League Finals in March 2019 for teams from Leagues B, C, & D - that is exclusively for League A group winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_U..._League_Finals

Now to build the four play-off paths, I'm going to assume the following
- Ten teams from League A, Seven from League B and three from League C qualify for Euro 2020 through the regular qualifiers
- We have an awful Nations League campaign and are ranked as the worst League B team

An important point to note is that the paths are built starting with the League D path, so that better-ranked teams within a League don't get punished by getting dragged up into a higher League's play-off. In the scenario I describe this is how the paths would be built:
- For League D, as they would have no orthodox qualifiers, their path would be made up simply of the four group winners (currently Georgia, Luxembourg, Kosovo and Macedonia)
- For League C, you would start building the path with group winners. However, if one or more of the group winners are part of the trio who qualify through the main qualifiers, the other play-off spot(s) is/are taken by the next ranked team(s) within the league who have not qualified through the main qualifiers
- For League B, with seven teams qualified for Euro 2020 through qualifiers, the best ranked four of the remaining five would make up the teams for the League B playoffs, leaving us out of this path
- For League A, as only two teams failed to qualify through the main qualifiers, there wouldn't be enough teams from the League to build the complete League A Path. As a result the third team would be the best-ranked League B team that has not already qualified for Euro 2020 (7 teams) or the League B playoff path (4 teams), which would be us. Because there would be no more teams left in League B, the fourth spot in the League A path would go to the best-ranked League C team that has not qualified for either Euro 2020 or the League C playoff path.

Essentially for us that means that, even if we come third in our Nations League group and fail to qualify through the regular qualifiers, there's still a good chance we'd have another shot at qualifying through the play-offs, albeit possibly against League A teams. In fact, if 16 of the other League A and B teams qualify through the main qualifiers, we would be guaranteed a play-off spot

[Stuttgart88]

the paths are built starting with the League D path, so that better-ranked teams within a League don't get punished by getting dragged up into a higher League's play-off.

That's what I was worried about. Thanks for clarifying.