Domestic Options/ LOI in Europe

[Acornvilla]

Hello friends, given we will have 2 clubs, Shelbourne and Shamrock Rovers playing in the Conference League proper this season, maybe it's a good time to make one topic to mention how that's going over here in the fancy international section of the forum.

Shels have qualified for the first time ever, and although a wonderful achievement in itself, only had to beat Linfield twice in the end. The 2nd meeting was particularly one-sided, again showing the gap between leagues north and south after Rovers humbling of Larne last year. Shels did put up a very good effort v the Croatian champions in the Europa League but were beaten well by Qarabag who just knocked Robbie Keane and Callum O' Dowda out of the Champions league, so no great surprise or shame there.

Shels has been a great story, albeit a more limited squad with less European experience, their surprising league win paved the way for Rovers to do something I wasn't sure could happen. They qualified right through with no parachutes. 4-0 (Gibraltar), 4-1 (Kosovo) and must impressively 2-1 win on aggregate v Portuguese (Brazilian) opposition in the playoff round!

There's been lots of chats here about the strength of the LOI relative to elsewhere and you all know I've long been an advocate that there's a little more there than you might think. The league is currently sitting 31st in the 5 year coefficient table, but the trend would be towards the mid 20's if anything like what's been happening recently continues in the medium term.

We're going to have at least 12 more games to keep an eye on how a bunch of Irish fellas handle European competition against sides of varying abilities, but plenty on par or above many sides Ireland face internationally. Rovers squad especially is of a higher standard, and is almost entirely Irish which is pretty cool to see, sure Pico has 50 odd cape Verde caps, but he still has a big Irish head, only himself, as well as subs, Wales cap Alan Matthews and N.I u21 John McGovern were the non ROI squad members last night.

Probably the obvious ones to keep an Eye out for:

Michael Noonan, Josh Honohan, Matt Healy, Victor Ozhianvuna, Danny Mandriou and maybe Cory O' Sullivan?

From a Shels perspective, there's probably no one who will ever be where we'd need them to be but if I had to say anyone, Mipo Odubeko hasn't lived up to the hype yet, has something about him that could come good yet, or maybe u21 cap Sean Moore who has signed from West Ham, if he's good enough to actually break in to the team or not remains to be seen.

I'd give a shoutout to Sean Gannon for being in a squad that qualified for a European group stage every time it's happened which is a bit mad, maybe we should just call him up and we'll qualify for the WC

Anyway, I thought it'd be nice to have a spot to follow this with most of these players not needing their own threads

[Kingdom]

Brilliant thread idea. good stuff.

[Eirambler]

It's a great achievement alright - admittedly mostly down to Shamrock Rovers, as Shelbourne were more or less gifted their group stage spot by drawing a team as bad as Linfield twice. Incidentally, only one side from the top seven European leagues didn't make it through to the group stages of any European competition this season, and it was Shamrock Rovers that knocked them out.

Shamrock Rovers' form in recent years does make me wonder whether it might be possible for them to play in the group stages of the Champions League at some point - it's probably a long shot, but seeing a Kazakh team manage it, and their coefficient is lower than Ireland's, makes me think it could just about happen with a good seeding and a favourable draw in the Champions path.

In terms of players that might contribute to the Ireland senior team in a meaningful way at some point, Honohan and Noonan are the obvious ones, and who knows about Ozhianvuna at this point. Don't see it happening for Mandroiu personally. I'm also slightly biased here in that I have an extended family member in the Rovers team, but realistically he's not going to play for Ireland at senior level either.

But absolutely no harm to have a thread on them in this section, it will be interesting to see how they get on against some very decent opposition this autumn.