Heimir Hallgrímsson

[Razors left peg]

I've been thinking about this for the last few days, and I really think that no matter who was appointed after such a protracted and disgraceful 8 month period was going to have to hit the ground running or the knives were going to be out immediately. MarC Canham is the root cause of the current unrest with the team. Everyone was completely p!ssed off by the nonsensical time frame it took to hire a new manager, and Canhams handling of it was infuriating. Not only did he annoy the fans, but every sports journalist in the country was also rubbed the wrong way, so I think they will already have a pent up annoyance no matter who the manager is. Courell poured fuel on the flames too when he was appointed and was talking about air gapping etc. The whole fiasco has created a sh1t storm that still hasnt gone away.

Now Hallgrimsson greatest problem so far is extreme naivety. Hes blissfully unaware it seems of how the manager hunt annoyed everyone, and he has a complete lack of understanding of how most football fans in this country think of the FAI in general. He has fallen in line with their thinking on O'Shea and again fails to understand how the majority of fans rated O'Sheas tenure with Kenny and also the 4 games in sole charge. The constant references to how similar Irish and Iceland fans are again shows a lack of basic understanding of Irish football culture, its a nice thing to say in general but the reality is very different. We arent as nice and polite as them and the fans here have been pushed to the edge already.

Taking the step back for the England game and letting O'Shea run things was a massive PR disaster and whoever gave the go ahead for that should be booted out the door immediately. To be fair, either they did seem to realize this or Hallgrimsson himself realized that he had to take a more hands on approach because the team set up was much better for Greece and he was much more forceful with his interactions with the team and media. In regards to him not going to the games, I dont have a massive problem with it because there is a short window before the next squad announcement and he should be eating video of the players. He will see much more game time just using WyScout vs travelling to games. One caveat to that thought is that I thought it was a bit concerning that Nathan Collins said that the 1st time he spoke to Hallgrimsson was in camp, I would have thought that a phone call at minimum to introduce himself to the core squad should have happened, but again this may have been down to naivety.

I seen enough in the Greece game to give me a little bit of hope that hes a good manager. He will need to take a much bigger hand in the squad compellation however as the last one was ridiculously unsuited to how we set up for Greece. Only having 4 central midfielders in the squad never seemed to make sense from the get go, and it was only highlighted further by all 4 of them starting against Greece and having no replacements available off the bench. Clearly the squad was formatted with O'Sheas 2 man midfield in mind, and that is something that has to change straight away.

Away to Finland and Greece are so important now. IF we lost both them game the stadium will have tumbleweeds blowing through it for the Finland home game. Hallgrimsson needs to get some buy in from the fans and players early too, so hopefully he will be the leader thats needed in the coming weeks.

[Olé Olé]

I've been thinking about this for the last few days, and I really think that no matter who was appointed after such a protracted and disgraceful 8 month period was going to have to hit the ground running or the knives were going to be out immediately. MarC Canham is the root cause of the current unrest with the team. Everyone was completely p!ssed off by the nonsensical time frame it took to hire a new manager, and Canhams handling of it was infuriating. Not only did he annoy the fans, but every sports journalist in the country was also rubbed the wrong way, so I think they will already have a pent up annoyance no matter who the manager is. Courell poured fuel on the flames too when he was appointed and was talking about air gapping etc. The whole fiasco has created a sh1t storm that still hasnt gone away.

Now Hallgrimsson greatest problem so far is extreme naivety. Hes blissfully unaware it seems of how the manager hunt annoyed everyone, and he has a complete lack of understanding of how most football fans in this country think of the FAI in general. He has fallen in line with their thinking on O'Shea and again fails to understand how the majority of fans rated O'Sheas tenure with Kenny and also the 4 games in sole charge. The constant references to how similar Irish and Iceland fans are again shows a lack of basic understanding of Irish football culture, its a nice thing to say in general but the reality is very different. We arent as nice and polite as them and the fans here have been pushed to the edge already.

Taking the step back for the England game and letting O'Shea run things was a massive PR disaster and whoever gave the go ahead for that should be booted out the door immediately. To be fair, either they did seem to realize this or Hallgrimsson himself realized that he had to take a more hands on approach because the team set up was much better for Greece and he was much more forceful with his interactions with the team and media. In regards to him not going to the games, I dont have a massive problem with it because there is a short window before the next squad announcement and he should be eating video of the players. He will see much more game time just using WyScout vs travelling to games. One caveat to that thought is that I thought it was a bit concerning that Nathan Collins said that the 1st time he spoke to Hallgrimsson was in camp, I would have thought that a phone call at minimum to introduce himself to the core squad should have happened, but again this may have been down to naivety.

I seen enough in the Greece game to give me a little bit of hope that hes a good manager. He will need to take a much bigger hand in the squad compellation however as the last one was ridiculously unsuited to how we set up for Greece. Only having 4 central midfielders in the squad never seemed to make sense from the get go, and it was only highlighted further by all 4 of them starting against Greece and having no replacements available off the bench. Clearly the squad was formatted with O'Sheas 2 man midfield in mind, and that is something that has to change straight away.

Away to Finland and Greece are so important now. IF we lost both them game the stadium will have tumbleweeds blowing through it for the Finland home game. Hallgrimsson needs to get some buy in from the fans and players early too, so hopefully he will be the leader thats needed in the coming weeks.

You're right about Canham. Oh, and he got a promotion. With decision making like that, no wonder the government are slow to stump up.

[JR89]

I really don’t understand him not going to watch players. And also to talk to them after games

Did the invention of the telephone miss Ireland?

[elatedscum]

I think it’s ok to be worried, concerned and without turning on him, there’s reasons for it:

• Relative lack of knowledge of the squad, considering he had 2 months to get to grips with it. To me, it would be very easy to go through the team positionally. Spend a day on Wyscout as a coaching group, working on keepers. Two days on right backs, two days on left backs, three days on centre halves, so on, so on. Get someone from the staff with knowledge to give a 2 minute presentation on each player before you start going through game footage. Genuinely it’s a 2-3 week job to me (13 working days)
• Leading on from that, delegation of tasks such as squad selection, team selection and press conferences, especially to people who he’s never worked with before and can’t have any idea really of how good they are
• Lack of balance in the squad (lack of midfielders)
• Starting 11 v England
• Substitutions v Greece
• Decisions not to go see games (genuinely, there won’t be many international managers not attending games in person, it’s a different experience to Wyscout and it’s valuable on multiple levels).
• Will he be living in Ireland? He said he was going to - but people mentioned on here that he isn’t as of yet

The defence of all of this is really about use of time in the short term at least. Not sure how he’s been spending his time but I’m surprised that it’s been so difficult.


On the plus side, we changed things against England relatively early and went out against Greece with a better starting 11 and plan, and maybe with a bit of luck (Ogbene’s offside goal), we’d have got a result. Promising, green shoots so to speak.


I do think it’s the biggest job he’s ever got. Iceland play in a stadium smaller than Tallaght Stadium and his last home game for Jamaica had under 10,000 people at it. Everything about it here is bigger than in Jamaica and Iceland. Time will tell if he’s up to the task.

[Acornvilla]

On him not living here yet, I have a hazy recollection of seeing it mentioned that he was going back to Iceland for a week because he's been here ever since his appointment. Tbf there could be any amount of family stuff that needs to be dealt with, so I'd probably give him a pass for a week.

[JR89]

On him not living here yet, I have a hazy recollection of seeing it mentioned that he was going back to Iceland for a week because he's been here ever since his appointment. Tbf there could be any amount of family stuff that needs to be dealt with, so I'd probably give him a pass for a week.

At the Q&A think it was said they were still living out of a hotel trying to find somewhere to live.

[Acornvilla]

He's a wealthy man, but the housing market is still awful here and with a relatively short term contract, fairly understandable they haven't rushed in to anything.

[texidub]

In a bit of tongue in cheek trolling, David Connolly (the artist formerly known as angry ant) offered to put HH up whenever he's in the UK. Might be an option:

[texidub]

The biggest thing in HH's favour is the quick turnaround between windows - Sept, Oct, Nov. He can turn this around quickly with more rugged and convincing performances. If things haven't improved substantially by the end of the NL, he's going to be in real trouble.

Parrott has to have earned himself some minutes in the next window, surely? I know HH wants a settled team as quick as possible, but how does that work out when a player outside the starting X1 (and not a sub either) plays themselves into obvious contention?

[Stuttgart88]

Parrott has to have earned himself some minutes in the next window, surely?

I guess it depends on how WyScout evaluates things!

Genuine question: is it useful?

[tetsujin1979]

I guess it depends on how WyScout evaluates things!

Genuine question: is it useful?

Shane Keegan talks about it a lot on the42 football podcast, seems to be widely used by scouts and managers

[nigel-harps1954]

I guess it depends on how WyScout evaluates things!

Genuine question: is it useful?

Generally it's incredibly in depth. Pretty much every manager uses it these days.

[Razors left peg]

I guess it depends on how WyScout evaluates things!

Genuine question: is it useful?

My understanding of it from having spoken with someone who used it extensively is basically think of the game Football Manager, but much more in depth statistics and evaluations, and access to full matches or individual player tracking videos

[John83]

FAI chief football officer Marc Canham convinced Heimir Hallgrimsson is a 'really good fit' for Republic of Ireland [rte]
A bit of a nothing-burger of mildly optimistic quotes. There's a little more on Canham's own change of title.

[Razors left peg]

This to me is a new nadir for football journalism in Ireland, McCadden should be ashamed of himself for writing it. Richard Dunne still touting his mate O'Shea to step in for Hallgrimsson also shows why O'Shea should never have been kept around firstly, but also that Dunne should never get paid to comment of Ireland games on tv since his bias is beyond ridiculous.

[Stuttgart88]

Awful stuff.

[seanfhear]

This to me is a new nadir for football journalism in Ireland, McCadden should be ashamed of himself for writing it. Richard Dunne still touting his mate O'Shea to step in for Hallgrimsson also shows why O'Shea should never have been kept around firstly, but also that Dunne should never get paid to comment of Ireland games on tv since his bias is beyond ridiculous.

Do they think that they are English reporters / commentators ~ ~ And that is an insult from me !

[nigel-harps1954]

Gets clicks and people reading the story online. Modern journalism.

[John83]

Jesus wept.

I'd sooner see Hallgrimsson lose ten in a row than go back to the market for another marathon of air gapping and gum flapping. And I'd take another year of waiting for godot over four more O'Shea games.

[SkStu]

Dunne must have headed the ball a few too many times if he thinks that a well considered position to take. Does he have no idea the stench of uselessness that JOS has brought to the role in his audition and to this point with HH? What a w@nker. I have said it, probably on here too, that the biggest mistake HH has made was retaining JOS - and it could prove fatal. This crap is exactly why and the average / passive punter will lap that rubbish up.