LOI in Europe 2022

[EatYerGreens]

I don't buy that. No business can make progress by naval gazing at itself. External benchmarking is key for a sense of perspective. Yes, there'll be some freak results like Sheriff changing their entire squad in the space of 12 months, but over the last five years of the coefficients, that'll balance itself out, and other teams will face similar teams.

Flora reached the groups by beating Hibs of Malta and Rovers. That's all. They lost two other matches. They picked up some results in the groups, sure - but we can't be making excuses for losing badly to a team from a country with a population a quarter of ours and league attendances about a fifth of the LoI's. Instead of making excuses about losing to them, or saying "If the LoI had achieved those results...", we should be aiming towards regular results like that, or better. And by and large, we're not getting them.

I'm curious as to what you think the answer is to LOI clubs achieving better results in Europe ? I mean - beyond just 'being better' ?

It's not like LOI clubs are going out to lose. Our league is what it is currently - with the financial and support limitations that it faces and which we all understand. Saying that LOI clubs should do better in Europe feels a bit like the priest castigating his attendance for there not being more of them. Perhaps clubs should stop selling their best players - but that is a combination of our financial situation, and also the fact that players themselves want to progress on to bigger opportunities/shop windows.

So beyond saying that our clubs should just be better in Europe, how will that realistically be achieved ?

[ontheotherhand]

It would be a bit like England's ability, potential, ranking being binned based upon losing to Iceland in Euro '16. Ok its a one off type thing but I agree that there isnt a whole lot wrong with trying to gauge the league's standards on European games, especially with leagues ranked around us. We know it isnt the only barometer but is an important one imo as it is used by the media and general public as a guide. Players would often comment on wanting to test themselves on the European stage.

Yeah that's fair. I'm not saying it shouldn't be used at all. I'm probably going too far in one direction to make a point in fairness to stu and yourself.

I just don't know how valuable it is as a key measure. Sometimes it will be when we can play a team from a league that looks and feels a bit like ours a few times over a reasonable period of time but things change so quickly that it doesn't seem reliable as a way to show how strong our teams our respective to the LoI teams that came before them or the league as a whole.

Maybe I'm wrong though. Cork in their recent prime did hammer Levadia and we've played them often enough as a league to use that as a measure.

[Nesta99]

I'm curious as to what you think the answer is to LOI clubs achieving better results in Europe ? I mean - beyond just 'being better' ?

It's not like LOI clubs are going out to lose. Our league is what it is currently - with the financial and support limitations that it faces and which we all understand. Saying that LOI clubs should do better in Europe feels a bit like the priest castigating his attendance for there not being more of them. Perhaps clubs should stop selling their best players - but that is a combination of our financial situation, and also the fact that players themselves want to progress on to bigger opportunities/shop windows.

So beyond saying that our clubs should just be better in Europe, how will that realistically be achieved ?

Very basically, coaching from a young age so that players dont freak if they have the ball under some pressure, having confidence not to fear opposition or make a mistake as I mentioned above. Bit of an irony that UCD were one of the best at bringing on players that could keep composure yet seem to have changed tack currently to boot the ball out of the ground methodology. i've seen a few players over the year that went in to total hiding in European games and just did not want the ball.

[EatYerGreens]

Very basically, coaching from a young age so that players dont freak if they have the ball under some pressure, having confidence not to fear opposition or make a mistake as I mentioned above. Bit of an irony that UCD were one of the best at bringing on players that could keep composure yet seem to have changed tack currently to boot the ball out of the ground methodology. i've seen a few players over the year that went in to total hiding in European games and just did not want the ball.

If that is the solution then :

a) It won't happen quickly, and

b) It won't be up to LOI cubs to make it happen either - as most child development takes place at other clubs and at schools.

So no point throwing rocks at LOI clubs to 'be better' over it all.

[Nesta99]

Yeah, it wont be quick, its not all up to LoI but if development pathways lead to LoI there is a connection. This is where the FAI need to do their stuff properly. LoI clubs need to and can lead from the front and not if dealing with the FAI singing from the same sheet then a few rocks can be chucked in their direction. Clubs can make signings and build along with bringing young lads through and how they set up can be interesting. If its a containment job against similar ranked clubs then i'd be critical of that lack of ambition and belief.

[geysir]

Kind of feels as bad as what - Cork losing in extra time in Iceland when a man up?

I felt quite good about that one.

[ontheotherhand]

Thinking about this a bit more - the one club who has really made an impact in Europe is the one who never really had any plan to do so at all. Dundalk were in serious trouble before Kenny took over and between a bit of luck and a lot of great mgmt they became Ireland's most successful European club. Sort of goes to show how unpredictable teams in Europe can be. So again it points to those fixtures as being a bit too much of a lottery to gauge progress on. You might get the Dundalk of Estonia one year or the Derry of Estonia the next.

[pineapple stu]

I'm curious as to what you think the answer is to LOI clubs achieving better results in Europe ? I mean - beyond just 'being better' ?

It's hard for sure. And I'm not offering an answer here. My point here is more to argue against the suggestion that we shouldn't be using European results to gauge progress. I think we really should, and should be worried by poor results such as this week's, or last year when two sides went out to leagues ranked in the 50s (and a third needed a 92nd minute winner to avoid the same fate).

I don't think clubs should stop selling their best players btw - they should absolutely do that. It's a significant source of funding in other small leagues. But 30k for the reigning champions' top scorer? That's shooting yourself in the foot. And it's a dangerous precedent to flirt with.

And against that is to note, as ger121 has rightly said, that we've seen teams have crap starts to Euro campaigns and then go on to do quite well in a later game. You'd never have thought, as Dundalk scraped past FH or Levadia Tallinn, that they would go on to nearly reach the CL group stages/put a proper fight up to Vitesse.

[TheBoss]

It's hard for sure. And I'm not offering an answer here. My point here is more to argue against the suggestion that we shouldn't be using European results to gauge progress. I think we really should, and should be worried by poor results such as this week's, or last year when two sides went out to leagues ranked in the 50s (and a third needed a 92nd minute winner to avoid the same fate).

I think its difficult to judge a league's standard based on losing a 2-legged match to league ranked below. Yes, those tables are indicative of recent results over the years. However, we see many examples of leagues that often over succeed based on the good draws and vice versa go down due to bad draws. For instance, the table at the moment has North Macedonia (52) and Montenegro (54) below Gibraltar and Andorra, you can hardly say that Gibraltarian and Andorran leagues have better quality because they are getting favorable draws and the prelim round has greatly helped them gain points. I think it has a lot to do with luck, as on the day things just don't happen for whatever reason. In my eyes, teams between 32-48 are very competitively matched, with anomalies of one/two decent team in some leagues. Personally, I think the argument that the mentality and tactics are more logical reasons for disappointing results. Look at Bohemians last year in Europe and they didn't even qualify for Europe for this season!

[pineapple stu]

Yes, those tables are indicative of recent results over the years.

Personally, I think the argument that the mentality and tactics are more logical reasons for disappointing results.

It's only indicative, for sure, and you're absolutely right to point out the anomalies.

But I think if you take a large enough range of data, then the anomalies start smoothing out. You could do something similar with our success rate against countries in the 40s/30s/20s/etc over the past 20 years (150 ties) and you can see the decline in results across most levels (except those in the 40s, bizarrely - that's almost entirely Longford's fault)

Period	50s %	40s %	30s %	20s %	10s %	Top 10 %
2002-06	N/A	25%	83%	42%	38%	17%
2007-11	100%	63%	50%	43%	0%	11%
2012-16	N/A	80%	29%	25%	0%	0%
2017-21	71%	86%	29%	9%	0%	0%

But these are just random stats; there's definitely something in the mentality argument and my stats aren't meant to be an alternative to that. Though I don't know why mentality would be such a big issue tbh - is it because we big up the European games so much and put pressure on them? But does that not happen in other countries too?

[Glen Of Aherlow]

Very basically, coaching from a young age so that players dont freak if they have the ball under some pressure, having confidence not to fear opposition or make a mistake as I mentioned above. Bit of an irony that UCD were one of the best at bringing on players that could keep composure yet seem to have changed tack currently to boot the ball out of the ground methodology. i've seen a few players over the year that went in to total hiding in European games and just did not want the ball.

I think it’s fair to say looking at young players coming through in the league that coaching is going on , there are some really good young players coming through that are comfortable on the ball

[CorribsideSteve]

I'm curious as to what you think the answer is to LOI clubs achieving better results in Europe ? I mean - beyond just 'being better' ?

It's not like LOI clubs are going out to lose. Our league is what it is currently - with the financial and support limitations that it faces and which we all understand. Saying that LOI clubs should do better in Europe feels a bit like the priest castigating his attendance for there not being more of them. Perhaps clubs should stop selling their best players - but that is a combination of our financial situation, and also the fact that players themselves want to progress on to bigger opportunities/shop windows.

So beyond saying that our clubs should just be better in Europe, how will that realistically be achieved ?

Beyond multi-decadal application of dedicated technique coaching, perhaps there's room for Sports Psychologists to come on board to help our players confront and conquer the fear of playing in Euro competitions? Fear of mistakes, fear of receiving the ball, fear of being muscled out of it by players with higher S&C levels, fear of being squeezed out of a chance by defenders/goalkeepers,fear of missing, which usually ends up with comically awful efforts at goal (the Sligo match was replete with this). Stephen Kenny had his Dundalk teams on a noticeably higher plane of mental toughness than any other LOI team I've known to play in Euro competitions (IMHO), so it can be achieved, though even there, they recieved a few awful hockeyings e.g. vs Larnaka,Qarabag.

[pineapple stu]

I think it’s fair to say looking at young players coming through in the league that coaching is going on , there are some really good young players coming through that are comfortable on the ball

Hasn't that been the case for a while now though?

If you look at, say, the UCD team that played in Europe in 2015, they were really comfortable on the ball. The 23-pass move in Bratislava which we nearly scored from (and should have had a penalty from) stands out, but we played technically well the whole first half of the home leg (when they had 11 men), and for three-quarters of the first-round tie too.

But those players came through different clubs, so that reflects either on different underage structures 10 years ago, or on UCD's first-team coaching. Dundalk were also capable of playing some decent stuff (I think the Legia away game in particular stands out, but also BATE at home); that's also a few years ago now and again, it either reflects on different underage teams or on Stephen Kenny.

Results in the UEFA Youth League have been consistently half-decent too (certainly better than you'd expect if it were the senior sides up against each other)

In that case, is it maybe the senior team coaching at some clubs that's still a bit (whisper it...) British?

[joey B]

Signing better players from abroad is probably where we’ll have to try and close the gap in Europe,a lot of the better teams even in the early rounds have 7/8/9 different nationalities in their squad,we are looking abroad more now but I don’t think we are attracting good enough players to compensate for the elite younger players we are losing from the league,better scouting and of course more money is how you do this and maybe we just don’t have the funds to get a higher standard of player…….

[pineapple stu]

Yes and no.

If you look at the LoI's peak - when we reached 29th in the UEFA rankings - clubs had mostly Irish players, and the foreign scouting was still very hit-and-miss (Ibrahmia Iyane Thiam anyone?)

It was a big benefit to the national team as well to have players like Coleman, McClean, Hoolahan and Doyle getting senior football here, and the transfer fees they went for helped the league too. So given money (and that's obviously a huge jump), I think the LoI can definitely improve with a largely domestic playing panel, mainly because it's done it did before.

And yeah, if a Babaz Livingston or Joey Ndo rocks up, well all the better of course.

[ontheotherhand]

The mentality one is interesting. Hard to generalize as each team and player will be different but maybe our players tend to have a bit more of an inferiority complex than those from other leagues. Irish players in the LoI either went to England and "failed" or never made it there to begin with which carries it's own stigma. Kenny had his Dundalk side thinking they were world beaters but maybe other teams go into the European games not quite believing they are up to it.

I still disagree on using European games to judge the leagues relative strength to itself over time but that doesn't mean I think we shouldn't be measuring ourselves against other leagues by the way stu. I just think it's useful in a different and probably more important way. Ultimately it's progress against those leagues around us that matters, not whether this years league is stronger or weaker than the one 3 or more years ago.

Back to this years edition, I can't see us getting past Ludogorets obviously (I fear a hiding to be honest) but the teams in the EL draw look reasonable. I just think we've already lost our chance of going further than the ECL groups at best. We needed Byrne, Burke and Mandroiu. It was actually Jack and Danny's ability to link up that I thought might hurt a few stronger sides but that's gone now. Gaffney's been fantastic and Watts has stepped up well but those other 3 are levels above anything else in the league when full fit and primed. It's a shame we never really saw them in full flow. But we live in hope. Scrape a draw out there and we might hang on.

[Asterix]

Not sure if its already been posted but this is rovers group for the CL third round draw on Monday

Group 1
Seeded:
Match 1 Dinamo Zagreb (CRO) / Shkupi (MKD)
Match 2 Maccabi Haifa (ISR) / Olympiacos (GRE)
Match 3 Qarabağ (AZE) / Zürich (SUI)
Unseeded:
Match 4 Ludogorets (BUL) / Shamrock Rovers (IRL)
Match 5 Ferencváros (HUN) / Slovan Bratislava (SVK)
Apollon Limassol (CYP)

[pateen]

4 of us thinking of getting the train up to Motherwell for the Rovers game. I'm assuming a call to Sligo Rovers for tickets should do as there will be plenty about or could I be way off on that

[Nah Nah Nah Nah]

4 of us thinking of getting the train up to Motherwell for the Rovers game. I'm assuming a call to Sligo Rovers for tickets should do as there will be plenty about or could I be way off on that

Get them online

https://twitter.com/sligorovers/stat...c7jfHmBvwNIcWw

[D24Saint]

Basel (SUI) / Crusaders (NIR)
Tuzla City (BIH) / AZ (NED)
Royal Antwerp (BEL) / Drita (KOS)
Levski Sofia (BUL) / PAOK (GRE)

That’s a tough pot.