Great result for Bohs.
Very enjoyable night in the Aviva. It was great to be back there watching a match. It was a jovial carnival atmosphere before the match aswell without being over the top from what I witnessed. I’d imagine that Bohs will be in a bit of hot soup over the south stand and it could cost them another match in the Aviva.
Yep, an absolutely tremendous night, but I hope common sense prevails and the shenanigans in the South stand don't mess it up for us in the next round. It's been so fecking long since we've all been allowed to go to a match like that, few drinks in town, thousands of fans together, you'd forget what it's like.Originally Posted by D24Saint
But a brilliant performance and roll on the next round.
Looking forward to what's up next for the Irish teams.
Some of the bigger clubs have been drawn against each other in the Champions Path of the ECL. There will be some teams in round 3 which Rovers will be stronger than so hopefully the draw will be kinder this time around.
No one will be putting the house on Dundalk but they will be favorites for their tie and another home and away win would do wonders for the leagues co-efficient.
Bohs have a really good chance now to start building their European legacy now. Playing the second leg at home against a Luxembourg team is a proposition that Bohs will fancy. Really looking to that game now, hopefully it's in the Aviva again and they can get a bigger crowd again.
Would be savage to be looking forward to the third round with 3 Irish teams still in there.
Out of interest does anyone know what the tie breaker criteria is for teams with the same co-efficient? Dudelange and 2 other teams rank is 8.000 but only one of them can take the last place in the seeded side of the draw. The draw is done on Monday so Bohs could end up playing an unseeded team in round three should they manage to progress.
Last edited by yurt; 15/07/2021 at 11:08 PM.
Probably the best performance I have seen fom Bohs... ever..
Outplayed Stjarnan But .In fairness to them, kept it clean, not a bad foul in the game..
Cracking atmosphere inside and outside the stadium.
Dawson Devoy wont be long with us after that, unfortunately.
I hope, for Bohs sake, that Dawson Devoy is tied to a decent contract.
After tonights results, League of Ireland rises a place to 46th, equal with 45th placed Finland, just behind Liechenstein, Georgia and Latvia. Couple more wins would make a big difference again.
Last edited by nigel-harps1954; 15/07/2021 at 11:40 PM.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
Sligo played really badly (not that FH were any better really). Had they played as well as they can and still lost then I'd accept that it was indicative of our league not steadily improving. But any team can have a bad day at the office (or two).
The problem with the LOI is that we don't operate in a vacuum. If you look at the Icelandic teams that played in Ireland today, they had international players on display. Stjarnan brought on a guy who's had multiple caps with Denmark. So whilst the LOI may be steadily improving, other leagues are also doing likewise - or improving much faster than we are.
Up until this century it used to be that European international football had a large pool of teams that were pretty poor. At various stages you would easily have included the likes of Iceland, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Wales, Norway, Finland, Israel, Slovakia etc on that list. But so many previously crap countries are no so much better at the international game, such that the pool of genuinely crap international sides has shrunk to largely being just really small countries now.
The same dynamic has been happening with leagues too over the last 2 decades. Look at where Cyprus or Luxembourg are in terms of league coefficient versus only 10 or 15 years ago, for example. They're both above us in the rankings now (Cyprus by a country mile). Yet our clubs would've been confident facing any teams form those countries 20+ years ago.
So I genuinely think the LOI is slowly improving - especially from where we were in the years immediately after the end of our crazy era of financial excess a decade or so ago. But the problem is that lots of other leagues have also improved at the same time as us. And quite a few at a faster rate too. The lowest rung in club and international football is continually being raised standard-wise.
Last edited by EatYerGreens; 15/07/2021 at 11:44 PM.
I wondered that myself. It was noticeable that the crowd in the rest of the stadium was rigidly following social distancing, sticking to their seats etc. Whereas the South Stand was bedlam.
Join the misery so lads, nothing to do with having some cop on of course!!Old misery guts again, lol, do you work for nphet
Well congrats to Bohs who finally beat an Icelandic team at the 4th time of asking, albeit an ailing team who have 'freefallen' to down around the relegation zone of the Icelandic league, nevertheless a victory Bohs fans should be celebrating for days. Maybe even a hall of fame result. FH are/were in an even worse state than Stjarnan, but 2 weeks ago they re-hired Iceland's best coach and it looks like he managed to sort out just enough in the defence to beat Rovers. Them's the breaks and now Rovers take on the baton of shame from Bohs.
it's handy enough to have Iceland and Ireland in the same section, this time it allowed for a shared charter plane for the clubs of both countries.
If the experiment was to check for football fans losing the run of themselves and potential for covid cases increasing then I think it's fair to say the experiment was a success
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Probably the same crew that cost the club money every home game with flares.
But regressing relatively speaking is still regressing. I don't doubt, for example, that our teams of today would beat the teams of the 60s, even though the latter were able to get some great results in Europe. That doesn't diminish my point though. And I don't think there's even much there to say the LoI is steadily improving. It's certainly gone backwards in the past decade with the financial collapse.
Also, you can't talk about Sligo being a one-off - or even this year being a one-off. It's not. The UEFA rankings take a 5-year span into account and we're 46th (albeit that lower countries have a boost from playing preliminary rounds) In that time, we've only won one tie against a country currently ranked higher than our near record-low rating (Rovers' excellent win against Brann of Norway), if you count penalty shoot-out wins against Finland, Moldova and Latvia as draws. That's absolutely dreadful.
I think this is a bit selective though. Yes, Cyprus and Luxembourg have got money in their leagues now. But there's other leagues that are going the other way. The Baltics are a good example - Latvia and Lithuania have sides going backrupt regularly (Ekranes, Ventspils, Skonto, Daugava, Kaunas) despite being regular European qualifiers. The Lithuanian league is such a cluster**** is could only manage six teams last season. Yet they're still ahead of us in the rankings, and beat LoI sides three of the last four times we met.
Your point on Cyprus/Luxembourg is valid, but you can't make it without acknowledging the flip side. Otherwise you're just putting out the argument that suits your existing viewpoint.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 16/07/2021 at 9:18 AM.
I can't comment on how clubs are run off-field, but the suggestion is that things are much better run than before - that's improvement. The players physically both fitness and strength has vastly improved even in the last 5+ years - that's improvement. The ability to match and play football with teams ranked higher has improved - thats improvement. Lasting the course for 90 minutes and not conceding 2 or 3 goals in the last 15 minutes - thats improvement.
I think if you are to compare results, as co-effs do then you're right stu there is little improvement, and like inflation, if the LOI teams dont improve at the same rate as their European counterparts then yes it is regressing, but theres many more factors involved than just the points. A good comparison would be the mean results, compare against similar ranked opposition from previous years and the actual scores. I think it would be much closer. A nice project there for you stu.
From when I started watching there has been massive improvement, theres no question of that, regardless of the shift of other teams, but the same old failings of lapses of concentration or just silly goals being given away has not changed - it just occurs less often, especially as the same teams compete more often in Europe. And that cliche you referred to about managers saying getting a feel for Europe and the opposition would suggest there is truth in it.
Last edited by paul_oshea; 16/07/2021 at 9:41 AM.
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
I think it's a suggestion, not an improvement.
Has fitness really "vastly improved" in the past five years? Really?
How many ties can you show me from the last 20 years where an LoI side conceded 2/3 in the last 15 minutes?
You'll forgive me for holding your judgement slightly in suspicion given how little LoI you watch
Couldnt that be part of the reason they have beaten us 3 from 4, over stretching their finances and gaining advantage, financial doping of which the LoI knows nothing about!
Talking in the context of Europe not domestically, definitely conceding 2 in the last 15(perhaps 20 is more accurate) minutes was something you'd see quite often 10 years ago. If you show me a page with all results ill happily do it, but I have no interest in googling results for the rest of the morning!
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Knock yourself out.
I think that sort of stuff largely died out in the early 00s to be honest.
Our biggest recent Euro defeat was Derry's 10-2 hammering against Midtylland, and the Danes scored once in the last 20 minutes across both ties.
Ya that wont work, you'd need the times of goals. Dundalk conceded 2 late ones versus Qarabag, only a couple of seasons ago.
But just scrawling through that you can see that results appear to have narrower gaps in the more recent years per club.
Btw that doesnt include last years, any other years missing? Bohs last result there is 2013.
Last edited by paul_oshea; 16/07/2021 at 10:06 AM.
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
You'd probably have to look at how many time the same club conceded 2 in the last 20 mins in non European games and maybe even how many time the opposition scored 2 last 20mins in other European fixtures. But Id agree that there is no shortage of memories of the late capitulation, maybe its perception too, as they are the ones that hurt, stand out so memory bias kicks in.
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