id be kind of worried at this stage about collins. hes on a bit of a slide over the past 12 months. surprised at the reaction to bazunu. thought he should have done much better for the goal. collins incredibly poor for it mind you
"Mikey Johnson looked lively. ' Yes he did and I would think that most Irish fans were left wondering why he wasn't in the starting line up. SK has done very little right during his tenure, but Johnson is one of his success stories. And in his curtain call game as manager Kenny leaves one of his most lethal weapons on the bench? Difficult to understand.
You touch on a good point. It is the change of environment when Collins and others report for international duty. They must all feel that they are going from ultra professionalism to amateurism. The glory of representing your county is the motivation but the players surely must feel a lack of leadership and a certain air of defeatism about the place.
The next guy needs to turn Collins into a six.. because as long as Cullen is anchoring that midfield, we're screwed..
Burnley have finally realised it and dropped him..
Everything you say is true, but the fact remains that we are arguably the worst team in Europe in terms of creativity. Josh Cullen could not build a paper plane, never mind a decent attacking move. And how far removed from the midfield conversation is Jack Byrne? Not very far I would suggest.
Cause he played 25mins of football all season for Celtic and can't even make match day squads. If Johnston started and underperformed Kenny would be getting it in the neck for starting someone who isn't making match day squad at club level.Originally Posted by mark12345
With Ogbene out think he was gonna get criticised no matter who he picked (bar Andy Moran maybe) to replace him had they underperformed. Robinson gets a lot of stick, Idah/Ferguson combo didn't work against Greece, and Johnston can't make a squad for Celtic.
This talk about the environment being "amateurish" or that it is holding back players like Ferguson and Collins doesn't stack with reality. In fact, it's contradicted by the players themselves at every turn. For example, Matt Doherty delivered an impassioned defence of how well coached they are last night. Collins and others have been similarly glowing about Stephen Kenny, Keith Andrews and the coaching team. Daryl Horgan talked about how brilliant John O'Shea, Damien Duff, Anthony Barry and Andrews were, with their attention to detail and personalities.
For whatever reason, the training pitch work Doherty referenced is not showing when it matters. A consistent issue is how poorly prepared the team is when the ball is turned over and it's primarily because Kenny wants them to commit bodies forward. When we lost the ball for the goal yesterday, seven Irish players were in the Dutch half. The LCB Liam Scales was much higher up the pitch than LWB Ryan Manning. Collins and O'Shea were then left man-for-man with an ocean of space behind them. One pass to Weghorst was enough to open the defence up. It's too easy. When it comes down to it, individual moments and decision-making are crucial when you play that high-risk approach. Collins needed to win the ball or stop Weghorst - he did neither and that part is on him. The defence was left utterly exposed in the breakdown and Weghorst did brilliantly to turn him.
To some of us - and certainly Kenny! - the idea of dropping off in these situations, not committing as many players forward or playing a slightly deeper line is heresy, but it arguably would have helped stop that type of goal. We've shown a defensive naivety that was certainly not present during the MON and Mick years. It's no surprise in some respects given how many relatively inexperienced players are now in the team.
End Apartheid Now! One Team in Ireland!
Just further shows how poor the production line has been when it comes to players born between the years '92 and '98. There's no leaders in that team around the 27/28/29 age mark and when you look at Scotland they've got that with Robertson, McGinn, McGregor, McTominay, and Tierney.
Dara O'Shea whose the oldest of the "Kenny's Kids" as we'll call them will only be turning 25 this March. In four years our young players will be in around those ages and you hope some of them become team leaders for Ireland like those listed for Scotland.
They didnt drop him, he was unavailable.
We’ve so much strength in depth at CB and lack of same in midfield, this has to start being a realistic and better option. Hard for an international manager to experiment with that as it carries some risk if it goes pear shaped (remember Christie?!) - although that is what friendlies are for…
edit: meant to add, not seeing the best from Cullen - slows everything down and a complete sideways merchant.
He was on the bench.. and never came on
Cullen is going to turn out to be a fantastic Championship holding midfielder, but he'll not make it at Prem level
Think Cullen will be fine once the next manager comes in and can make us solid again. Wouldn't judge some of our defensive players too harshly over the last 12 or so months. Especially this campaign. When you're so open to play against and have a tactically inept manager it spells disaster. Which is basically what this campaign was.
But we really need someone with a bit of passing range to play in midfield next to him cause he's not going to be the ball playing midfielder we need.
Someone that can pass between the lines a la Moran for his assist for Szmodics last goal but he's not gonna play deep, or has the passing range of pinging passes 60 yards a la Luca Connell but don't know how his medical issues might set him back.
He was suspended for one game and then just kept a settled side for the next game. Considering he's started all bar 1 game this season that he was available for suggests he is still a starter.
Well he is a premiership holding midfielder because he's doing now currently isnt he!
Interesting comment from SK post game: "The Republic of Ireland have never won an away game against a tier one team in history..."
"Surely not?" I thought. But looking back on it, if you discount a couple of wins away to England in the British Championship, NI have only managed it twice (I think) in competitive games, vs Spain and West Germany, with the last of those in 1983!
I suppose SK got it right when he added: "and it's because it's very hard."
Stephen doesn't get to define what is a tier 1 country is
Mon beat Austria, wales and Italy in the euros
Stephen has embarrassed himself and what worse our country.
To quote Richie Sadlier "There is no point going over what he said or analysing his mood, or pick apart what he said or deems as important. We're at the point now where we're ready to move on."
I discounted Austria , whom NI beat 2-1 in Vienna in the Euro's in 1994. Also Wales, on the basis that The Bale Years excepted, they've hardly ever done anything on the world scale. (I mean, both NI and ROI have more impressive overall records than them).
As for your two wins against Italy, they were both at neutral venues, so maybe don't count as "away"?
He's right.. and in fairness he got an absolute dog of a group, basically getting the top ranked team in Pot 1, 2 and 4.. I mean talk about the footballing God's being against you..
But what did for him were two woefully inept performances against Greece in this campaign, and losing against Armenia last NL campaign
The Luxembourg loss was also a kick in the stones
No one who's honest expected Ireland to finish ahead of France and Holland... but the **** poor NL campaign had killed the play off opportunity even before the draw was made.. we really need to fully understand how important NL is in terms of seedings for World Cups, and seeding plus play offs for Euros.. and you still have people thinking they are glorified friendly games.. finish 2nd in your Nations League group and you're almost guaranteed a play off spot in the Euros
Though watch next time, we'll likely end up with England, Ukraine and Georgia.. when we could end up with Wales, Iceland, Kazakhstan
Looking at the teams coming up, Greece, Georgia and Turkey are all fourth seeds.. would we fancy beating any of them?
Unless we improve quickly, we'll be in the C path fairly rapidly
Kenny was engaging in semantics - maybe instead of trawling back through 100 years of results he should have focused on the upcoming game.
The defence was a shambles all game - and it has been like that since Kenny took over - that is on the manager.
When you can't figure out how to get the ball to your best player - that is on the manager.
And I could keep going
And the guff by Doherty about how great training sessions are actually exposes the incompetence of Kenny and the coaching staff in match situations.
Even the free kick when it was passed sideways for someone to have a shot (can't remember who it was) showed incompetence - if you are going to do that you do not pack all your players into the box in front of the goal - you spread them out so there are gaps - and secondly, you have players running towards the free kick taker to drag defenders away from where the ball will be travelling towards the goal.
Last point - Bazunu was excellent last night - and had zero fault for the goal. As I said before - give any striker worth his salt time to set up and pick his spot and he will bury the ball - there was nobody within yards of Weighorst when he hit it.
I disagree - Holland were there for the taking in Dublin and were there for the taking last night - this is a very poor Holland team - France hammered them 4-0 at home and barely broke a sweat when beating them away. 4 points from those two games was entirely possible - as was beating Greece at home. That would be an extra seven points and a massive shift in momentum.
Would we fancy beating Greece, Georgia and Turkey - yes we should and if we don't serious questions should be asked of any manager.
Remember Kenny's six competitive wins were Gibraltar x2, Scotland, Armenia, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan - his competitive losses included Finland x2, Wales, Luxembourg (at home), Ukraine, Scotland, Greece x2 and a bad Holland team x2.
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