if hes smart he would walk, but hes too ****in ignorant and full of himself not too. ****in ejit he is
wayne henderson didnt ask to be selected at this level. kevin kilbane has probably never said "lads im going to be the engine of an international football team". shane long has got the big time charlie head on him, but being asked to provide the goals in his first alongside that flaw of the space time continuum theory, the space where robbie keane should be?Originally Posted by ken foree
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
i think this is where my comprehension of your post lies, or somewhere close to it. staunton wasn't playing, laying blame solely at his feet is ridiculous.
zombie/thread killer..
oh, im not. the players were disgusting - however each and every single one of them has the excuse "i didnt pick myself", or "im not in charge of tactics, i just play my assigned position as best i can".
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
If I hear that 3 points story again I'm seriously going to make a run at the telly. Maybe it would have been better to have drawn as it would have released us from the nightmare. Why can't he just say that he's not up to it. Be a man and face it. He loves dressing it up with this 3 points story. I thought there was a big inquest after the Cyprus game? If so, it seems to have been forgotten in the last 4/5 months. Robbie Keane may call it off as well. I think we've had enough. Give McShane the armband. Let Keane head off back to London. Morrison nearly looks as useful as him now.
We gave out about Paddy Kenny in Cyprus - well Henderson was no better with his one mistake tonight! Dunne did a lot of stumbling over that ball as well - our best defenderStokes played an important part in the goal. Stephen Ireland assisted and scored. We're relying on teenagers. Poor lookout. Wales could possibly tear us apart!
'And Crouch must score'
listening to stan after the game talking about the fighting spirit and how he knew it would be tough against san marino and how they are battlers and how were up to third in the table and...... am i just imagining things or did he actually say san marino will be there or there abouts at the end of this group??? or something to that affect?
anyways, all i could think of was david brent. only this isnt the office, and its not a comedy. your living in an absolute dreamworld stan, your not in control and you dont know what your doing. i mean this is the san marino team that has shipped 25 goals in their other three games. not only that but of the seven points that has us in third place, six of them were gotten against this very team. the man has to go.
arent we all just magic little monkeys...
wrong - once off maybe but after these results its clear that there is no direction from the bench - theres no plan b and plan a left town a long time ago.
we played the ball across the middle all night and left the SMarinos get men behind the ball and then lashed crap balls across the box towords dunne and kilbane. no other tactics. set pieces had no variation.
Who is this guy, Trapper Tony?
look, with the amount of "quality" we have, even a total absence of tactics should have been enough to beat this team by 3 or 4 goals. who exactly was lashing them balls back and forth across midfield again?
zombie/thread killer..
It's probably hysteria, but I think that's one of the funniest things I've read in ages.
Ade
You could see the tactics were amateurish, on the corners in the first half there was consistently no one picking up decent positions. All over the gaff. They constantly allowed play to slowly build up by passing it across the pitch and give them plenty of time to get their ten men behind the ball. Crosses were poor, aimless. No one in good positions.I doubt he gave the front two any instructions. Robbie Keane showboating and doing nothing productive...again. Poor Long, who should have eased in by his teammates, had to come out to the wings when he should have been the furthest up. He had to constantly look for the ball and was given f$ck all support. Henderson is a lunatic, what was that. I've never made a mistake like that...
I have just heard that San Marino scored their first competative goal in 9 YEARS tonight. The man is a buffoon (and not the italian goalie type). I must point out i haven't seen the game yet, as i don't have TV3, but i don't think i will now based on what i have heard.
This was a glorified friendly. We were right to play a few young hopes. Geary should not just have been in the squad, he should have got a run at left back. In the absense of S Reid and McGeady, Willo Flood down the right would have been worth a watch.
And as for Robbie Keane, the fact he can play for Spurs but not us is strange. If he is running about not trying thats bad, but is he? Perhaps he has realised Stan is badly out of his depth. It doesn't matter what your job is, if your boss is a moron, its hard to get motivated, especially if your being asked to do things you know are not right. We don't know whats going on there.
Robbie as captain however is a failed experiment. I don't like strikers as captain as a rule, and i have seen nothing in Robbie to make me think any different. Richard Dunne wears the armband for City every week, and he should do it for us. Its just a shame Andy O'Brien didn't take the move there he was offer on deadline day.
The one positive is Stephen Ireland, sounds like he did well. Hopefully he is the partner for Lee Carsley in the short term, and Stephen Ireland in the long term (although as a pair they might prove a bit lightweight, but at Quinn's age you don't know how he will fill out).
Henderson did not have much to do - It was very poor judgement to come out & fail to gather or clear that ball.
I wonder is Stan regretting ditching Kenny so readily.
I'm disgusted with most of those players. I thought Richard Dunne did all he had to do, apart from not stopping that goal (which I thought was mostly Henderson's fault. McShane had just gotten in front of his man when Henderson decided to run out. Awful stuff). Stephen Ireland played ok and Lee Carsley played ok behind him. Long was a bit too small to do anything out there, you could see from the first ten minutes or so that a bigger player was needed.
But the rest of them? They should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Up against what is essentially a plucky pub team, they didn't deserve to win. San Marino played a fairly cynical game but at least they had a game plan and deserved the point.
Steve Finnan annoyed me in particular. He put in the cross that led to Kilbane's goal but what else did he do? In one incident, he approached a San Marino full-back and basically let him take the ball off him, he didn't even try and go past him. He's overpaid, as are Robbie Keane, Damien Duff and Kevin Kilbane. Where were they tonight?
Any win is worth appreciating - goal difference isn't exactly our strong point anyway - but it's the sheer lack of any cohesive performance against the original minnows that worries me.
Where the f*ck has our passion gone? Our ability to play as a unit? There were holes all over Mick McCarthy's 2002 team and loads of flaws but at least there was a notion of one team playing together.
I'm not calling for Stan's head as I don't think it will do us any favours at this point but there is something awfully, awfully wrong with this team, something at the heart of it that is stopping it from performing. It could just be Staunton, who knows, we failed to beat the Swiss twice under Kerr when we should have beaten them comfortably both times.
Like McCarthy's team was sick at its core after the World Cup - jaysus, there's a memory - there is a vacuum within this squad.
I'll go to Croker and cheer these blokes on but nothing has convinced me since the last campaign that a lot of these lads aren't pushing themselves. And that's being nice and polite about it.
I agree with most of that post Donal - but I thought Finnan did well - by comparison.
Filing the place might be a problem if these performances don't change. Wales will sell out but after that...
are there 82500 people who want to pay good money to watch a crap Ireland side struggle with Cyprus on a wet wednesday in October??
Finnan played a decent if uninspiring game along with Dunne imo. But lads we got the three points and will give it a right good bash, Wales you better be afraid.
After a little time to reflect I’m probably the only one that is thinking of analysing any match atm.Anyway, we missed a brain on the pitch tonight. Andy Reid would have strolled through it. The front two were very poor. At one time Duff had the ball in a great position, all Keane had to do was stay on the edge for Duff to chip it to him and he was clean through. Instead he ran towards Duff to get the ball. This is something Stokes is fantastic at. He has an excellent football brain and always gets into great positions, staying on the edge of the offside trap.
Ian Harte was woeful. That’s the last time I’ll defend him. Henderson has it all to prove. He could arguably have saved the 2 goals he conceded in the games he played. The rest of defence and midfield were pretty much as expected. Stephen Ireland is nowhere near the standard of Andy Reid.
The thing with Stan is he won’t notice any of this.
Stan is without doubt the most tactically inept manager at any decent level of football at the current time. That’s not a statement of opinion, it’s pretty much fact and the FAI have to realise this. Why is it that every single manager at the top level plays a holding midfielder or deap playing playmaker, someone in front of the back 4? Surely there’s a big reason for it if every manager is doing it in the modern game. Stan not only didn’t play a holding midfielder in Cyprus but he didn’t play a central midfielder. He played an attacking playmaker with similar attributes to play central midfield as Aiden McGeady and a left winger with no football brain. That was the worst decision ever made by an Ireland manager imo.
I’m sorry but if you don’t know the basic things like that then you’re not fit to manage a football team. To make matters worse he didn’t even figure out what was wrong with the team that night. He blamed the defence. Almost every time Cyprus got the ball they got into the final 3rd of the pitch. That’s not the defence’s fault. The defence was rubbish that night in fairness but the main reason we lost that match was down to the midfield that Stan put out.
San Marino’s European Championships qualifying record before tonight was:
Played: 37 – Won: 0 – Drawn: 0 - Lost: 37
Goals scored: 4
Goals conceded: 168
We were 1 kick away from drawing with them. We could easily have given San Marino their first point in their 17 year history. That is not acceptable with the players we have at our disposal. Most of us actually underestimate the players we have. Yossi Benayoun said before we played Israel that Ireland were the best team in the group. He's going a bit far with that but he's hardly going to say that about a poor team.
We have one of the best goalkeepers in the world.
A centre half that has won his mid table premiership club’s player of the year award for the past 2 years and was 2nd the year before. He’s currently up there with the likes of Woodgate and Campbell as the form central defender in the premiership this season again.
A champions league winning right back playing constantly in the premiership’s most solid defence.
A left winger that was once voted by over a million people as the best left winger in the world. He hasn’t been great recently but he sets up most of our chances and there’s no way he’s lost his ability at the age of 27.
A right winger who is a fantastic prospect. By far and away Celtic’s best player up until he got injured against Cyprus. There’s no doubt in my mind he will be a great player.
A solid enough holding midfielder who does the dirty work and keeps things simple. Every team has one.
A playmaker with a fabulous range of passing and extremely intelligient and creative.
A striker who won 3 of the last 4 player of the year awards for Spurs. 16 premiership goals last season. He has the ability.
Another striker who has been scoring consistently for 2 years now and is up there with the best of them in the premiership scoring charts.
In my opinion those eleven players are definitely good enough to be qualifying for European Championships, not drawing against the worst team in the world. We’ve also got more strength in depth than we’ve had in years. We’ve always had excellent prospects but the likes of Stokes and Long are more than just prospects. Just because these guys aren't playing well for Ireland doesn't take away from the fact that they're good players. You're hardly going to be playing 100% under bad management, that's the point of a manager.
Anyway, lets make sure we salvage whatever we can from this campaign and that means good bye Stan Staunton. He got the sympathy vote by many after the Cyprus match but tonights interview was pathetic.
Last edited by eirebhoy; 07/02/2007 at 10:54 PM.
Sorry, yeah, talking about Euro qualifiers.
Hear HearWe have one of the best goalkeepers in the world.
A centre half that has won his mid table premiership club’s player of the year award for the past 2 years and was 2nd the year before. He’s currently up there with the likes of Woodgate and Campbell as the form central defender in the premiership this season again.
A champions league winning right back playing constantly in the premiership’s most solid defence.
A left winger that was once voted by over a million people as the best left winger in the world. He hasn’t been great recently but he sets up most of our chances and there’s no way he’s lost his ability at the age of 27.
A right winger who is a fantastic prospect. By far and away Celtic’s best player up until he got injured against Cyprus. There’s no doubt in my mind he will be a great player.
A solid enough holding midfielder who does the dirty work and keeps things simple. Every team has one.
A playmaker with a fabulous range of passing and extremely intelligient and creative.
A striker who won 3 of the last 4 player of the year awards for Spurs. 16 premiership goals last season. He has the ability.
Another striker who has been scoring consistently for 2 years now and is up there with the best of them in the premiership scoring charts.
In my opinion those eleven players are definitely good enough to be qualifying for European Championships, not drawing against the worst team in the world. We’ve also got more strength in depth than we’ve had in years. We’ve always had excellent prospects but the likes of Stokes and Long are more than just prospects. Just because these guys aren't playing well for Ireland doesn't take away from the fact that they're good players. You're hardly going to be playing 100% under bad management, that's the point of a manager.
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