Staunton did a Sven on Saturday, picked as many big names as he could regardless of where they actually would fit in to the team.
His subs were a joke, leaving Pat Devlin in charge !? That **** couldn't run a bath !
John O'Shea was a disgrace to the Green jersey.
Bye bye Stan. Go off back to collecting cones you useless git.
Don't know what you guys have expected. Germany have finished third in the world cup. Sweden who do have a strong team too went home with a 3-0 defeat just a few weeks ago.
Think the Irish did very well and i must admit that I was releaved when the final whistle was blown as I thought you might pull a 92. goal again like you did in 2002.
I hope you have more luck for the upcoming matches - this one was rather unlucky than undeserved!
Only back late last night and I'm fcuking fuming. I wasn;t too optimistic before I travelled over but then with all the German withdrawls and post WC hangover I started getting optimistic. This was enhanced on the Fri and Sat seeing all the Irish fans and flags and colour etc. How wrong could I be? Very.
Our performances are just getting worse. And I'm only taking competitive matches into account. Sat night was about as horrible as it gets. That was a German team there for the taking, I don't give a damn what anyone says. Any German I spoke to before the game was really worried about their back 4. And it says it all that we didn't expose them once.
I don't know where to start with our team. Fcuk opinions at this stage. Shay Given deserves to lead this team out. Is there a keeper out there who is consistently as good. I don't think so. We were discussing the squad on the way to Stuttgart and we came to the conclusion that Carr has been guarenteed a place in the side,otherwise there is no reason he has come back from retirement. I can't see why Finnan should be moved around just to accomodate that fat little cnut.
The two centre halves did fine but were exposed quite a few times which you'd expect with the midfield that was in front of them. Andy O'Brien did fine but he does need to start getting first team football. The Finnan experiment didn't work as he didn't seem to link up well with whoever was in front of him, but thats irrelevant now, he's the best right back in the Premiership and thats where he should play for us.
Why Steven Reid was right mid I'll never know. Everyone to a man on this forum thought he was #1 for centre mid.
As for the substitutions I was pulling my hair out! Doyle being taken off was ridiculous unless he was injured. It was the muppet beside him (who looked back to his best as far as the arm-waving and sulking goes) who should have been subbed.
Anyway there is no point in dissecting the team player by player. Lehmann didn't have to make any decent save, Given was man-of-the-match and they hit the bar twice. Nuff said we were sh!te. The ominous result is the Slovak 6 Cyprus 1 scoreline!
Final thing and the Irish fans could take note. The German fans were brilliant. It was cool to go to a stadium that is supporter friendly. The colour and the pride they displayed was top notch. I especially liked the drummers and the flag-wavers right behinfd the goal. With the dimensions of Croker we will have plenty of space behind either goal so maybe we should look at doing something similar.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
Can I ask what Given had to do other than the excellent save from Klose (i think it was)? I think people are going a bit ott by saying Germany should have won by more. Every match is going have a few chances otherwise football would be a pretty boring game. We should have scored 2 with headers from Dunne and Keane. Dunne said after the game: “I know I should have scored really".Originally Posted by Kingdom
Also, Keane reckons he wasn't offside for the goal he scored. He was slightly offside as seen on the replay but it was another chance for us.
Stan must go?
Kilbane must go?
O'Shea must go?
Keane to be stripped of captaincy?
My god, what next???????????????????????????????
I cannot fault our lads committment. I'm gonna have to get a dvd of the game to get a better feel of the game but for me a few points stand out.
1: Steve Finnan is a RB, a very good one and should play there. End of, why should he accomodate Carr?
2: Kilbane and O'Shea are just not good enough. They mean well and try but they haven't got the class to stamp their authority on a game. Keep them out of the centre of MF if you have to play them Stan.......it cost us the game. They didn't provide cover nor any attacking threat.
3: MacGeady needs to start on the right and move S Reid inside.
4: Keep Doyle on!!! When 1 nil down with the fans behind the team we needed a 3 man attack. Clinton's pace and workrate would be my choice over Stephen.
staunton should never have been given job in first place. no overreaction there.
Kilbane not good enough at this level and his wastefullness with the ball is going to cost us games. he does work hard and that is admirable but it is not enough therefore he shouldnt be in team.
O shea is just a waste of space. very talented footballer who is suffering from bein a utility player at utd. not good enough to play in midfield and doesnt even have kilbanes workrate as a saving grace.if he is going to find a german with every ball he should go declare for them.
keane shouldnt have been made captain in the first place. he didnt play well on sat and wasnt subbed possibly cause he is captain.in fact when was the last time he had a good game for ireland? doyle was no pele on sat but he did seem to play with a sense of purpose lacking in keane. people arent going mad cause we lost one nil. it was the manner in which we lost. we never ever at any stage in the game looked capable of creating a goal scoring chance.
Simple and straight!!! Staunton has'nt a flucking clue what he's at!!! How about trying to play players in their right positions ffs!!!
You can't expect to win a football match when the manager has'nt a flucking notion how to setup his team. You only had to look at the bench saturday night, losing 1 - 0 not a budge from the bench nobody warming up, nothing ffs!!!.
Can sombody please ask him to play the players he has in their right positions and see how they get on, all this flucking about with players can't give them confidence only uncertainty!!! FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now i would call the management team shambollic!!!! not the players.
Altough only for Given (9), Dunne(8) O'brien (81/2) this would have been a rout!!! I was sitting in the stadium watching as the germans bombarded our gaol and only for above players we would have been a laughing stock!
Still not sure how I feel about this (and I think quite a few of us are the same). Odd to say that the result was better than the performance and we lost!
Biggest problem was we never looked like scoring. There are many reasons for this, poor midfield = limited chances. Duff had a(nother) off day. We have 2 forwards who are not really pure goalscorers.
Assuming none of this is going to change radically, we need to get back to winning by the odd goal and what is worrying for me is that we are scoring none from our old source, set pieces. Corners, free kicks etc produce nothing despite having big lads in O'Shea, Dunne, O'Brien, Kilbane. Isn’t this something they could work on.
I agree with the poster above who says Harte should be back when fit. That leads to one of a number of selection issues. Finnan is no LB but I thought Carr was good, reminded me of what a good player he used to be. Therefore either play him and Finnan on the Right side and then have no McGeady or drop one (possibly have Finnan for the tougher matches and Carr when we have to win).
If Carsley is coming back (and he's worth a chance) then it would seem obvious to drop O'Shea. I suspect Stan will drop Reid though!
Not downhearted yet though, 2nd place is between us Czechs, Wales and Slovaks. Need to win against Cyprus and San Marino this year and I think the key game for us is the one against Czechs in October. We have to win that, not just for the 3 points but for the momentum. The team seem to think they are weak now. Lose or even draw and we are going to need away wins against good teams (and we dont get a lot of those).
Anyone thought about playing Harte in center midfield?
I know he's never really played there before, but his range of passing is very good. My impression is he is good a breaking play up but as a full back is often beaten for pace when tracking back. Hopefully this would be less of an issue as a central midfielder as he in theory shouldnt be up against speedy wingers.
It's a weak position for us so part of me thinks we should play him there as we don't have any world class alternatives.
If we have him in our team, and with the likes of Duff, McGeady and Robbie Keane getting free kicks, we have a great chance of scoring.
I wish we had the chance to try out a combination of say Carsley and Harte in a friendly on Wednesday (I know Harte is currently injured).
I'd like to see Stan organise a full team v under 21s match or something like that on Wednesday.
Really? I thought the German fans were practically silent for 90% of the game. I couldn't hear a peep out of them when we weren't singing. All they seemed to do was start Mexican waves and boo us when they died at the start of the Irish area.
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
From my end of the ground I could you when they were silent but once the Germans responded with songs of their own that was it. The Irish looked better than they sounded I thought. I was over 100m away though so any German singing near me would have drowned out the sound from that far away. There was a game group of about 25 Irish 15 rows behind me who gave it a good go throughout.
I actually thought at the time that it was the good Irish start to the game and the subsequent defiance of Given & Dunne that silenced the German crowd for long periods.
Last edited by Stuttgart88; 04/09/2006 at 2:10 PM.
A friendly would definitely have been useful alright but not to look at Harte as a midfielder! We're weak in some positions and we've got to look at how to address the problems. I worry that Staunton may not realise what can be improved upon.
Staunton complained after the Dutch game (SKY TV interview) that he only had the players for a few days.
Have to admit I didn't hear a single German song the entire match. Every sound out of them was co-ordinated and pre-organised - they were told what to do and they did it. Even then, it only amounted to calling the players' names or answering the drums.
Note elsewhere in this very forum that the Germans copied us!
Overall - better performance than I was expecting, although we still didn't really look like scoring. Tells us nothing about the Cyprus game though - no idea yet how we'll do when we're expected to chase a game. But Saturday was a game we could afford to lose - were expected to lose really - and the fact that we did a lot better than we could have is a positive in itself. The Czechs at home is a far more important match than Germany away.
I thought that as well Stu - the Germans around me needed a prompting to chant and fly the fags. "Deutschland, Deutschland etc etc" was ringing in my ears for an hour afterwards and I was desperate to sing "you've only got one song" if we scored !!! To be fair when they did jump up and start waving the flags it was brilliant but we made a good bit of noise as well.
Problem from where I was was that "Deutschland, Deutschland..." was enough to negate our singing. My mate said that on telly the Irish came across brilliantly so hats off, I think it's just that where I was our attempts to sing were futile.
Molly Malone had a few renditions down our end. Yours too? Is this making a return?
Didn't happen down our end unfortunately.
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
The Irish were definitely the louder from the TV. If the ref blew the whistle you'd no which way the call was based on the crowds reaction. A big cheer and it was an Irish free.The Irish sounded like the home team tbh and it really seemed to pump up the players at the start.
Gerry McDermott on Keane from Today's Indo. Jesus Christ.
Staunton's decision to hand him the captain's armband last March was instantly rewarded with two goals against Sweden. However, against Chile, Holland and again on Saturday, the skipper was peripheral.
I'd say so. I couldn't hear the 12,000 fans singing "The referee's a w@nker" over my own singing of it. Doesn't mean I was louder than the 12,000 others!
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