I think a slight touch of realism is needed here.
Rovers beating Brann is excellent.
Dundalk apparently controlling large parts of their game but ultimately unable to score over 210 minutes - against ten men for a small part of that - is a bit worrying. They weren't particularly impressive in the bits of the games I caught. Had they lost on penalties, would the overall view still be "very good"? Not sure. But the overall performance would have been the same.
Cork improved at least, but an apparently shambolic first leg has led to a first ever elimination by a Luxembourg side. Not entirely unexpected, but hardly very good.
Pats maybe exceeded expectations in only losing 4-1 overall. As with Cork, the second leg was better than the First, but 4-1 is a long way off previous LoI v Sweden ties.
Not meant as a dig at Cork or Pats of course; even their own fans were pessimistic. But one very good result doesn't really make a very good night I think.
In terms of rankings, we're back up to 38th, which is where we started. We've passed out Moldova and have been passed out by Latvia. There's still five leagues within 0.500 of us, so we could drop yet. Or we could catch the couple of leagues 0.500 above us yet.
3-year total still has us 48th, so Dundalk and Cork's run in 2016 is still holding us up a lot.
I think last night was no more than an enjoyably average one tbh
Last edited by pineapple stu; 19/07/2019 at 12:11 PM.
There is nothing wrong with realism but I don't think anyone is getting carried away. Dundalk fans are aware that they were the seeded side and that they failed to score. I'm sure Rovers are also being realistic regarding the positive and negative aspects of their performances.
However, the fact remains that we have two sides, with the potential to improve, into the next rounds of their competitions.
Obviously haven't got to watch the Cork or Pats games yet (any links would be much appreciated) but what was so enjoyable about the Rovers game was the way in which it was won and the fact the lads showed a bit of balls when they went behind but the football at times was simply stunning, some of the situations they can get out of playing just quick short passing when everyone around me is screaming to boot it justifys the heart attacks they give me.
I see Owen cowzer has somehow managed to give Pico a 6 for his performance? Must have been watching a different game to me, some of the other ratings he gave were bizarre too.
Interestingly there's a player that played for Partizan against Rovers playing for this Cypriot team, Marzovic, at least I'm 99% sure it's him. Hopefully that's a good omen.
soccerway.com is your friend for stuff like this.
Rovers v Partizan here; click into the player and he's at Apollon alright. Small world.
Calling it a "very good" night in Europe is probably a bit over the top, although it's sometimes fine margins between a "decent" night and a "very good" night. E.g. if Kevin O'Connor had converted that injury time free kick to make it 3-1 in Luxemburg and send City through, that might have been that fine margin.
A bit worrying?
I'd certainly preferred if they had scored a goal or two over the two legs, but it is encouraging to have kept clean sheets and performed solidly from a defensive perspective. Going through on penos versus a single goal win on aggregate hardly changes the outlook much for the next leg.
Progression to the next room was the always aim.
Job done. Doubters stand aside. Next please.
Congratulations to Dundalk and Rovers - absolutely magnificent results - ye are an absolute credit to the league and ye did us all proud!
That Latvian side were worth 6.5 million. Dundalk about a mill(right or wrong).......the Brann team Rovers just beat over 2 legs were worth 10 mill!
The Latvians could afford to buy a Brazilian and a few other lads in the run up to this spending more than a million to try and squeeze through against Dundalk.
It was always a 50:50 game. Dundalk missed some good chances but can be proud of the way they played over the 2 legs and just like the game against the Icelandic Champions in the end it was enough.
Felt Dundalk missed their speedy winger a lot in the second leg where there was more space to do damage. Hopefully Qarabag will only look at the 2nd leg and wont know about him....secret weapon ahoy!!
Qarabag are indeed a different class of beast BUT.............really stretching for crumbs of optimism here so...... have a look at the actual teams they beat en route to the champions league group stages a few years back....the only strong team they beat was in the play-off round against FCCopenhagen who they are very very familiar with having met more often than anyone else....the rest are all teams that on our day, our champions would be able to give a good game to. They did pull off 2 draws against Athletico Madrid in the group stages.....that's frightening alright......from the seeding they got from that run they had favourable opposition draws so used that to regularly make it to EL group stages.
The Azeri league does not start til August so they are just playing European games and friendlies right now and next 2 weeks. It consists of 8 teams about 5 of them have grounds less 1400 - 5,000 capacity with a few with Tallaght sized ones too & access to bigger 30000+ stadium for later European games just like we`d use d`aviva. They do not have 30000 at every home game. Their league is sponsored by TOPAZ.
Their squad has a lot of Azeri internationals....its not just an international 11 bought by Petrochemical millions......For Dundalk to pull off even a draw or score draw would be incredibly tough but not impossible...
Apollon Limassol have a lot a Argentinian and Spanish lads playing for them with hardly a Cypriot in sight......there is more than a whiff of Tevez/Macherano-Iranian-3rd-party-agent-to-West-Ham-then-onwards-lark if you take a look at how they operate...
One of their directors sits on the UEFA exec board so this activity seems to go under the radar for now.......for Rovers to get anything out there would be magnificent
Here`s hoping!
Last edited by DeBluePhoenix; 19/07/2019 at 1:37 PM.
blue star rise from ashes like a bird o`flame our glory days are comming again
Confirmed that our away leg kicks off at 8pm local time which can only be a good thing for us with the heat there
It was an average Latvian team, and if Dundalk had failed to get past them then perhaps Vinny Perth might have felt some sharp knives, at least judging from this over the top article............vindication, what? Anyway glad that we have two LOI teams left in the comp, and I feel we might have another good few nights yet.........
https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2019...in-says-perth/
I`m certainly not worried that Dundalk failed to score over 120 mins, we also kept a clean sheet in two games, still looked the most likely to win it the other night, and eventuallly kept our never to win on pens, and coped without our best player. All of this was acheived by playing just ok, so there is room for improvement, thats for sure.
Any win by an Irish side at any round in either CL or more so EL shouln't be understated, nor should getting past one round, all very difficult to achieve.
I will admit if we had failed to get past Riga, that would have been a huge missed opportunity.
Bigger fish to fry for both Dundalk and Rovers now, but both off to a solid start in my view.
#DundalkFC - First Irish club to win an away game in Europe (1963), first Irish club to win points in a group stage in Europe (2016).
I suppose the point is that Qarabag are a better side than Riga, and are going to be tougher to score against. If ye struggled to score against Riga - and to be honest, from the bits I watched, there weren't that many clear-cut chances created - then it's going to be a bigger struggle against Qarabag. And will ye keep a clean sheet against them?
Obviously there's the FH factor in all this - scraping by an Icelandic team was not the way to lead into beating BATE the way ye did. But while I think "playing just ok" is a fair comment, it's surely not going to be good enough against Qarabag, hence the reason I said it was a bit worrying.
It's understandable that taking on higher ranked teams with a big budget and strong recent European pedigree must be worrying for some.
If Pineapple stu is doing all this worrying, maybe the fans can relax and cheer the team on come Wednesday. C'mon da town!
I think there was a lot of unseen pressure on Dundalk. Even among us supporters it was about getting through a round as a seeded team and bank the €1.2m to keep the passive type of the owners engaged. The positives from both legs were the clean sheets, no clanger ala LoI in Europe moments. We seemed a bit toothless but between the way Riga sat in and having to rush some players back from injury, Duffy having to leave from the airport and Hoban not firing by former standards a low scoring tie was expected, 0-0 and winning on penos was too close of course. To have a penalty shoot-out under the belt is handy and will have built confidence. We also know there is a lot more football and goals in this Dundalk side and with 2 more games in CL alone we will play in to better form. 2016 was a slow start v FH but come the game against BATE we had improved immensely in performance. Second leg in Rosenborg we were better also. Benson and Murray have had more game time. Kelly has had his first real spell of playing in Europe. Albeit just offside Hoban showed that he can take a chance and is due to hit a run of goal scoring form as there is little wrong with his link and hold up play. So all in all if you start solidly from the back, you can work on attack, especially when we had so much of the ball regardless of the Riga pressing game.
Rovers were excellent if you take nothing more than the character they showed in both legs by scoring when they had to. It was great to see a player like Byrne back himself, in his own box, dribble his way in to a passing opportunity and then Rovers short passing out of trouble and keeping possession. No panic, full of confidence - who said that Irish players lack technical ability. It reminded me a bit of the Dundalk vBATE game in ways where the opposition were almost taking exception to the Irish side not rolling over. Brann weren't quite as nasty about it but they had a wtf look about them like BATE and didnt expect to be beaten.
I think were are all guilty of expecting the worst when LoI teams are in Europe, the almost inevitable clanger moment undoing a great performance. With this in mind as we came out on the positive side of a penalty shoot-out and winning at tie that the LoI side fell behind in in the last half its understandable that people are considering it a very good night. Cork leveled their tie also after a terrible home leg, while I havent seen it better goalkeeping and they might have pulled off the win against the odds - McNulty's form have been questioned for a while now. Pats just gave themselves far too much to do but still pulled themselves level in the away leg so showed some fight at least. It was a drama filled 2 days of European football where at one point 3 of 4 sides could have progressed. As they say its the hope that kills you and Cork were typical in that regard. But I think minimum expectations were reached with 2 sides progressing. Prior to the games I think generally LoI fans would have taken what transpired.
I fear that Rovers could experience something like what happened to Dundalk in Cyprus, though I think that chastening experience for us could help Rovers. You just never know with Dundalk, if we play to our potential there is a chance however small. We dont want the parachute route but at least its there and we have at least given ouselves a shout at EL play-off round if the draw is kind eg one of lInfield or Torshaven. The owners just might be happy also with the minimum of the 1.2mil banked....
Last edited by Nesta99; 19/07/2019 at 5:42 PM.
That's a fair point as well.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Familiarity with our clubs can lead to over-confidence as much as familiarity with our ****-ups can lead to pessimism. The consensus on here was Dundalk to go through and maybe one of the other three; that was pretty much spot on.
But sure let's see how it goes. Qarabag are beatable (BATE-able? ) on a good day. I imagine Dundalk fans will be paying at least some interest to the Europa League draw on Monday though. Dundalk should be able to get a favourable draw in that, which would be a nice worst-case scenario.
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