Larne down 6 nil on aggregate to Ballkani is pretty terrible right?
Larne down 6 nil on aggregate to Ballkani is pretty terrible right?
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
Yeah, surprised by that one. Bit of an outlier in the nordy results
Hibs 6-0 up tonight and there'll likely be no letup after last week's embarrassment
Rovers at least playing with 11 men with Kenny gone off
KA score again, so that's 5-2 now
Pretty bad overall really, even allowing that Dundalk aren't the side they were
Losing home and away to that side really is brutal.
Ferencvaros sadly arent feeling nice enough to give Rovers a moral victory like they did last year.
Poor results indeed. I think they have just done their homework and stifled us tactically not that is a major task. Miss Benson in these types of games where he can drive the team forward and not just play across in front of their defensive setup and then to the flanks and cross. Too predictable and laboured. That they doubled up on O'Kane from the start shows where they saw risk and thats where the threat was regardless. Hoban not himself at all, must not really be fit unless there was some tactical change, less dropping deep in trying to chase the tie.
That is a heavy aggregate defeat for Rovers.
Spare a thought for the Swedish teams. Four ties this week(Hacken, Kalmar, Djurgarden & Hammarby) and they lost them all.
Hungary had 4/4 sides in this round and may only end up with Ferencvaros in the next round.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
Dundalk... The 2016 vintage era seems very far away now. Wet paper bag defending, poor first touches, and a good 150 aimless crosses to nobody, over two legs against not the best team in Iceland. Hockeyed 5-2 on aggregate. Technically outclassed.
Damn for Rovers, they don’t even get to have a moral victory that they at least got last year.
Slightly surprisingly, we're still ranked 32nd after all that, though it's getting tighter. In fact there's three countries level in 32nd, of which Latvia have a team in the CL path of the Conference League, which should be easier to get points from.
Behind us, Finland have at least four games to come as HJK are in the CL Europa League path and probably favourites to reach at least the Conference League groups. Kosovo have a match against the Gibraltar champions next, Kazakhstan have three teams left (including Tobol against Derry, and Astana who have at least four matches left and should make the Conference League groups you'd imagine)
Even the Faroes have two teams left, one of which has four qualifying games and a group stage to come. Group stage gives a bonus point by itself and then carries double points.
We could be looking at finishing this season around 36th - which is where we finished last season too, but (and I think we've done this before) we dropped a bad year five years ago off our coefficient only to replace it with another bad year. That's on top of the questions being beaten out the door by sides from Iceland and Luxembourg raises
I don't know what to make of Derry's chances next week. Tobol were a bit lucky to beat Basel - who had two players sent off and conceded three goals in 15 mental minutes at home. But they got back level in Kazakhstan early enough yet Tobol not just held on but scored again to win it.
Derry v Shakhtor Soligorsk is the game that stands out - one where you thought Derry had a chance but they got stuffed instead. But hopefully they can set least get a home result
UCD v Derry postponed this week.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 04/08/2023 at 7:20 AM.
Another random LoI link - KÍ of the Faroes play Molde next. Sivert Gussias of KÍ is ex-Molde - scored for them against UCD in the Youth League in 2017. Leo Østigård (now Napoli) scored the other two. Erling Haaland scored in the shoot-out. Three others are playing top flight in Norway or Sweden. Neil Farrugia is the only player of note from the UCD team. Conor Kearns, Joe Manley, Mark Dignam also played.
Mad the difference in careers between two sides who needed penalties to separate them then.
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