You said Euro 2024 will be his second campaign - so you're grouping all the 21 competitive games to date (including tonight) as the first campaign.Originally Posted by Real ale Madrid
That's excessive. Nobody else has had a 21-game "first campaign". So I don't agree with your dismissal of the suggestion that he's going into his fourth campaign as "nonsense". It's a very valid way of looking at things.
in micks first campaign we finished a whopping 10 pts behind romania and only a single point ahead of lithuania to get 2nd place.
there were some awful performances on the way and we went out with a bit of a whimper to Belgium in the play offs.
I am a big mick fan and loved most of his first stint in charge but there was a lot of forgiveness given to him for the first couple of years tbh
But the latter is not close to being the former though.
Your more detailed post is more reasonable. I would argue against it in places - Luxembourg got so many points in part because they beat us, which was a bloody awful result and can't be used to big them up, and regardless of Portugal starting Ronaldo, etc, the fact that they dropped Jota, Dias, Moutinho and Cancelo (who all started v Serbia) is indicative of how they approached the game - don't lose, don't get injured, which they did. I don't think your point about the three-team Nations League group is relevant - my point is that we really shouldn't have finished lower than our seeding (which you used as a positive) given the dreck that was one seed below us. Mightn't have happened if Slovenia, say, had been that team. I think you're also really stretching it with our "best results in years" - Scotland was a good win, Belgium had their second string, Portugal weren't bothered, Serbia ****ed all over us and how we drew that one I don't know, and you ignore Mick's draws against Switzerland and Denmark or MON reaching the World Cup 2018 play-off. A draw against Serbia is bugger all use if you're going to drop points against Luxembourg/Azerbaijan/Armenia, which generally speaking we didn't do beforehand. And using pressure as an excuse doesn't wash. He made that pressure in the first place.
And I agree in other places - we are improving of late (but that's from a very low starting point)
Absolutely. Was a bit ropey and we got out of jail more than once. But it's still streets ahead of anything Kenny has achieved.
Think you're being a bit harsh on the Belgium game though. One wrong linesman call (and some bad defending from it of course) was the difference over two legs. Probably our best performances that campaign.
No, I did not say that. I was making the point earlier, repeatedly, that this is the 2nd of 2 qualifying campaigns that SK has undertaken. We are currently on Qualifying campaign No. 2 of which the first phase -, the NL, is now coming to a conclusion and phase 2 - the Qualification group - starts in March - any analysis of this entire qualification campaign should be done as a whole. You may disagree with my analysis that it is nonsense to single out each competition but that's how I feel because the NL and the Quals proper are inextricably linked together. My example re. Promotion to league A / Failure to Q for Euro's which would result in SK losing his job bears that out. You may disagree but please don't put words in my mouth.
The original post was -
You replied "What's this 4th campaign nonsense? Its his second campaign". So if you want to make a big deal about the word "qualifying", do you want to retract your comment given it's not in the original post you were replying to?
I suppose if you always finished where you are seeded, it's a sign that no progress has been made, although there has been a lot of improvement since the Luxembourg debacle. If Ireland needs to qualify, it must finish higher than its seeding. While he has brought a different style of football to Ireland, to be fair every dog and divil is playing the same now, including clubs in the lower English leagues so we would have gone that way anyway I suspect. For some reason, I can't warm to the man yet I liked every other Irish manager but it's a results business and hopefully we'll perform tonight and in the future qualifying games but there is just something that tells me he's always going to be an unlucky manager and his post match conferences will be about what might have been.
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
More reasonable is it? Ah come on now Stu - we can't all be as reasonable as yourself!
I'm not bigging them up at all - but you make the point we were lucky to draw Luxemborg - I'm just contesting that - Luxemborg beat the 5th seeds in our group twice - a feat achieved by no other 4th seed in qualifying, Luxemborg were a middle of the road 4th seed - we could have gotten easier draws and the results bear out that analysis.
I didn't make any point at all about how Portugal approached the game - you made reference to how they rested players which somehow negates our result against them - I countered with the fact that they still had a team of top level players where we did very well to get a result. Plus I made the additional point that the congested nature of the fixtures in comparison to pervious campaigns disproportionally favors the countries with the bigger squads - allowing Portugal to use a squad - something that SK and other lower ranked countries are not able to do thus making progression even more difficult. Portugal messed up big time by not taking our game seriously anyway which was great.
So It's relevant to point out that we were lucky to draw Armenia - but its not relevant to point out that we could have gotten an easier draw than we did ?
I didn't use it as a positive - I merely presented the fact that we finished 3rd as 3rd seeds. That's all.
2 things here - I said "some" of our best results in years - our home competitive record has been abysmal lately. I don't think I'm stretching it pointing out the records that were broken nor did I ignore other games.
Mick's draws against Swi and Den were in the midst of the most depressing Q campaign ever undertaken and are specifically the reason IMO why SK has had such a difficult job to begin with!
Is it 6.15 yet.
was at both legs. at home we were great for the first 20 mins or so and then very poor for the rest of the game.
i cant remember us making any chances in the away leg other than our goal. yes, there was a disputed throw in but our defending for both away goals was poor.
don't get me wrong though..... it was a mixture of very inexperienced and very old players in that team. my point is that it was a time of great change after jack had retired and that mick got a good amount of time to implement the changes
Is it not the case that Mick left us in a position whereby, barring an absolutely disastrous Nations League campaign featuring 3 moderate-to-poor sides in Wales, Finland and Bulgaria, we were more or less assured of second seed status for the World Cup?
We managed three draws and three defeats.
It does take away from our result though. They were getting through that one with a weakened team with the aim of not losing and not getting injured. And we still didn't have a shot on target for the first 89 minutes. The Belgium game is similarly not as good as made out - we didn't draw against the number one team in the world (as you said); we drew against their second string. Those two results have to be taken in context I think.
Yes, because you presented as a positive (by putting it as pretty much the only argument in saying Kenny gets a "pass" for you), but really the sides one seed below us were pretty bad - and we still barely finished ahead of them (one point ahead of Bulgaria, goal difference ahead of Luxembourg, and we could still finish behind Armenia)
Are you retracting your dismissal of Snapshot's "fourth campaign" as nonsense yet, in light of the fact that you clearly mis-read it and imbued your own meaning?
I was using the word qualifying to clarify my position for you. If someone says 4th campaign and I thought that was nonsense and go on to indicate that I think its his 2nd campaign - I think its pretty obvious to all what I meant.
I don't think its a retracting issue tbf.
Context is fine but I think you are being selective with your context - the point remains that those were still good results that's all. I don't think its over simplification to point that out. Point taken about the No. 1 team in the world though. That's probably stretching it a bit. Additional context is smaller nations having to play 3 games in 6 days on multiple occasions. This disproportionally hinders smaller nations IMO - I think that's additional relevant context.
You made the original point :
You made a simple reference that we were lucky to draw Armenia. If we were actually lucky during the NL draw and drawn in Group B2, instead of Israel, we would have ended up with Iceland , Russia ( thrown out ) and Albania. How is that irrelevant? You are suggesting we got this massive slice of luck in the draw? I suggest the 3rd seed that are now promoted to League A ( Israel ) are the lucky ones - not us who drew Scotland, Ukraine and Armenia!
Second in group and into playoffs for both France 98 and Euro 2000.
And only one minute away from actually winning the Euro 2000 qualifier group. Goran Straveski.
That's Ireland performing at or above its level. It only felt like a "grace period" at the time because we were coming off the back of the 1988 to 1994 period and our expectations were out of whack.
I don't agree. You made a big deal over the importance of a word the OP didn't use. You're changing the OP's context to call it nonsense. I don't think that's fair. I don't see why the Nations League shouldn't be a separate campaign (even if it just a second way of qualifying for the same thing). I certainly don't see why it's nonsense to suggest that, which is a needlessly strong statement.
Yes - but you're still missing the point. Armenia (and Luxembourg) were the lowest-ranked of the teams seeded one place below us. They were the ones least likely to be able to overtake us. Bulgaria weren't, but they were in freefall. So when you present as good enough for a "pass" the fact that we finished in line with our seeding, I'm saying that a better lower seed could easily have passed us out, so the achievement isn't that impressive at all.
The teams seeded ahead of us weren't great; Finland, Scotland and a Serbia side who blow hot and cold. We didn't finish ahead of any of those, or even come close to them. 9 points behind Finland and 1 ahead of Bulgaria. 8 points behind Serbia and ahead of Luxembourg on goal difference. Currently eight points behind Scotland and 1 ahead of Armenia. That's not a pass for me to be honest. It's concerning. Over three separate campaigns.
I didn't change the context of anything - 4th campaign is simply wrong imo - I think its 2. I made a clarification for you to add the word qualifying because for some reason you comprehended my posts into :
Its a simple point of view.
The bit in bold is factually incorrect anyway as I've already pointed out with Luxemburg. They were much more likely to overtake us than Belarus or Bulgaria for a start.
I think a PASS mark is fair overall given the circumstances and player development issues new caps etc. - of course if you are going to point out bits of an argument in isolation and attribute them directly to a Pass mark its not going to make sense. Overall we've had a bit of luck with some draws - not with others - we've had some good performances and some dreadful ones and overall we've not really made much progress but not gone backwards much either and latest performances in general give a cause for optimism for me. Let hope we kick off with 2 wins tonight.
looks like my posts are getting deleted. long live king kenny i guess.
We lost by -1 goals tonight. That was muck, and to hell with the possession stats.
Intrigued now as to how you twist that performance tonight into a pass mark
Armenia, who lost 14-1 on aggregate to Scotland and Ukraine, drew 3-3 with us in the group.
The question marks over Kenny just aren't going away. 21 matches and three dire campaigns in
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