Depressing. Will we ever qualify for a tournament again?
How much are the Greeks paying Poyet? Can’t be much more that we’re paying Kenny.
Is there gonna be a heap of Greece are an up and coming team messages in here tonight? Same as Luxembourg. Same as Armenia. Same as usual.
Depressing. Will we ever qualify for a tournament again?
I have nothing valuable to add to what is being said here, just to reinforce how abject that was. The camp etc all well intended and the right thing to do but he must be totally and absolutely ineffective if that is what the end result is. Total sh!te. Unforgivable really.
Thought we picked the right team. I thought we made the right changes. I thought we had the right preparation.... and we were absolute sh1te.
I dont have any thoughts of where we go from here. Depressed and completely p1ssed off.
I think Idah has a lot to show before he starts again tbh. But other than that - yeah, I agree.Originally Posted by Razors left peg
I still think with Johnstone and Ferguson, Monday will be handy enough. But then in September we play Holland? They mayn't have been great last night but they'll still have more than enough for us. Fourth place looks likely cos we've a long way to go to beat that Greek side at home
Where is Wally… I mean Kenny
Kenny out , at this stage it doesnt matter if he is the messiah or not , we need a change
Appalling. Cullen and Molumby were like Darron Gibson and Paul Green in midfield, at their worst. We were naïve, shockingly organised, timid in possession, and too easy to play through. Wing-backs were beyond rubbish. Against a pretty modest team. Very disillusioned.
Yeah Idah was terrible, but at least he pulled him off at half time. Same with Smallbone, it wasnt working and he changed it early. But we had no spark. Everything was slow and painful. Players couldnt make basic forward passes.
I dunno, yeah of course manager will get the flack, but the players I thought deserve a lot of the blame tonight. Doherty was awful, Lenihan kept giving ball away, Collins was sloppy, Molumby was crap, Cullen kept passing backward, O'Dowda the cause of 2 goals, Ferguson worked hard with no supply but touch was poor at times, Idah was horrible, Smallbone ineffective. Subs not much better.
I give up! Maybe a different manager will get rid of the inconsistencies in performances, but tonight Im scratching my head with no answer
How old will Evan Ferguson be before Ireland are capable of playing like Greece? 18? 28? 108?
Realistically we're out of the running for qualification after two games. It's all so predictable. The natural breaking point arrived at the of the disappointing Nations League campaign and the FAI should have acted.
Can anyone come up with a credible reason for now persisting with Kenny? Because there's nobody better available? Really? He's getting very well paid by international standards for what he does. Is there truly nobody more competent out there who'd accept the job?
It's was same old story again tonight. We're far, far too easy to play against don't even get the basics right. Kenny, as nice a man as he is - and I very much doubt his detractors feel any personal animus towards him - simply isn't up to the task. Something many of us had worked out within his first half-dozen games in charge.
Last edited by Trequartista20; 16/06/2023 at 9:36 PM.
Maybe its phrased perfectly
We have some decent players but we don't have the quality at midfield to go 3 at the back and definitely not away from home. Even Greece at home play a standard 4 at the back and have a covering midfielder to protect that space in front.
Chastening night - embarrassing, shambolic and surely the end for Kenny, whether it comes with the quick immediate hook or at the end of a slow death in November.
I was a big fan of the appointment and I really wanted it to work, but this rollercoaster, while never boring, has quite outstayed its welcome.
I agree the players carry a lot of the blame. Many of them are too experienced now to be spoonfed. But watching them with sustained spells of possession in the second half was just so, so painful - a bunch of guys who clearly didn't know where to go, what to do. Players bunched together in the final third, moving into the same zones or completely static. Can't say anything more damning than the attacking player we missed more than any other was Shane Duffy.
We need to go back to cutting out cloth for a bit. That doesn't mean we have to fall into any old two-banks-of-our Trapps but that was a very attacking team that got shown up in every phase. We can't go out so naive, so clueless again. Northern Ireland are out there almost getting away points in Copenhagen with Jonny Evans and 10 AN Others. I'd take a bit of that again while we try to figure out who the hell we are.
Ou-est le Centre George Pompidou?
Yeah fair play alright. Third consecutive loss with him in goal now. All one goal scorelines.
No Irish manager has ever won in Greece. No Irish manager has beaten Greece at all. The team is crap. The players are pub standard. Add in heat, and a cobbled together bunch of rusty players at the end of a long hard season, and all the ingredients were there for what happened, so they happened. Changing Kenny is not going to turn water into wine.
Tonight was so poor. First time in Kenny’s time I thought players didn’t seem to be really believing in their manager/ managers plan. Unfortunately I think players seemed to have lost confidence which is reflection on Kenny and management team.
I was all for Kenny, knows Irish football and seemed to always believe players can play above themselves (2016 Dundalk in Europe). However tonight they looked utterly outclassed by very average international team. It’s terrible that very average players from Greece look so comfortable in tight spaces, always positive in possession where Ireland played back even when they had chances to turn. 2 wing backs for Ireland consistently sat deep rather then push on, mcclean had acres to move into but never went into space even when Johnston had gone inside.
One of the posters here said could anyone come up with arguments to keep Kenny. Unfortunately I can’t but only thing in his favour is FAI are broke and would cost them a few quid to get rid of him but also they would have to pay him off and then pay a new manager. Kenny is on €500,000 a year. I assume FAI could not afford to pay much more. What manager would come and work for that kind of figure. I don’t think it’s an attractive job at all. Not an argument for Kenny just an observation.
****e night
Disappointing performance more than anything. Midfield is a massive problem and I'm not sure what the answer is. O'Dowda shown up. Too many gaps. Kenny needed to hang his hat on this campaign and this was a key game.
You can blame Kenny all you like but it's actually extremely simple.
This is one of the worst crops of players we've ever had. To some extent, we're all guilty of overhyping the players but if we actually look at them dispassionately, they are almost all bang average players.
Ferguson obviously has potential. Looks like we have a couple of decent keepers. And that's it. A bunch of championship players in the main who I'm sure are honest, decent lads but a million miles from the level of player Ireland used to have in the glory years.
I thought the same tonight too for the first time. I’d been thinking it all throughout the second half (given how they came out and how poor all the subs were, Johnston excepted) but in some ways it was the Doherty red card that cemented it for me.
Probably taking it a step too far but I wonder if this is the sort of performance and general game that would put Cannon completely off?
I missed the post game interview - anything worth reporting from that?
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