Lawal called up
May as well start the thread for this I guess. Lawal added to the squad, as Eirambler noted in the Senegal thread. For Luxembourg, the big controversy is around Gerson Rodrigues, who scored the winner in Dublin four years ago, who is in the squad despite his domestic abuse conviction appeal being heard (and largely upheld, except to increase the compensation) last week. Him being their record scorer may have something to do with it. When Daniel da Mota (99 caps) was convicted of defrauding a pensioner of a six-figure sum in 2020, he was dropped for a couple of years.
Anyways, have to be vaguely confident of this one, even given recent history with Luxembourg. They lost 1-0 at home to Slovenia on Friday and beat Sweden 1-0 in March, both in friendlies. But in the Nations League, they didn't win a single game against the North, Bulgaria and Belarus.
Presume we can expect some changes. Slightly surprisingly, my prediction for Senegal had 10 of 11 spots correct (but I had O'Brien instead of McAteer, strangely), so to give that another go -
--------------------O'Leary--------------------
O'Brien----Collins----Omobamidele----Scales
Festy------Taylor------Smallbone------Manning
--------------------McAteer--------------------
--------------------Parrott---------------------
Luxembourg fans are planning a protest at the game
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeagueOfIreland/s/Ogyz3mbqzF
https://x.com/IrelandFootball/status...90443813761309
5 Changes from Senegal game for today
Its really not that complicated!!!
Rodrigues Dardari
Moriera Barriero Sinani
Dzogovic Jans Korac Carlson Bohnert
Pereira
Fine lineup for the Flying Luxies
Just reading about Florian Bohnert in preparation for this classic.
His life story reminds me a lot of a poster on here from many moons ago, Nigel.
Why are they called Luxembourgish?
Is that no one can be a true 100% Luxer?
Yeah, that there's nothing mad isn't a bad thing. O'Leary deserves a cap. O'Brien, Ferguson and Parrott in should actually strengthen us. Then Phillips is the one player that we're really looking at as an unknown and that's ok. I wouldn't have liked to have gone mad with Honohan, Finn, Phillips and Lawal all starting. I don't think that's useful
If we see Lawal but not Finn we have an answer to that one and how Finn looked overall in training maybe ?
HH wasn't exactly glowing about the call him during the call up. Wanted to see his level against our own lads, and the previous squad presser he said he'd watched him and he was good sometimes but other times not, in France. Particularly with Phillips starting, which I think he's lucky to be. Anyway, just a theory.
This is a tough watch so far. We need to get our foot on the ball, try and hold possession for a few minutes.
Outrageous that Rodrigues is being selected to play by the way. I’d like to think we’d have a bit more morals about us if in the same boat. When you see the kerfuffle about Robbie Keane managing in Israel and how it rules him out of the Irish gig in the future, it kinda pales in comparison to a convicted domestic abuser!
You think that's bad? Researching for the post game podcast I found Sinani's favorite band is Jedward!
Awful stuff so far. Mainly caused by lack of any decent ball control through midfield.
Its really not that complicated!!!
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