Rep Of Ireland -v- Germany

~Rebel~

<edit>

scratch that, got mixed up with number of remaining games, forgot about the welshmen, nevermind!

DeadSkin

RTE news there said John O'Shea is out tonight, really screwed for a centre back tonight.
I don't even rate JOS that much either

~Rebel~

So Dunne partered by Joey O Brian i guess?

he's only just back from injury himself as well isn't he?

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Reckon Bruce will start myself.

~Rebel~

hws he been getting on actually? any of his old mans talent showing up yet?

Bounty Hunter

Brian Kerr watching the match as Sky Sports news's pundit, very honestly predicts Ireland to lose

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~Rebel~ wrote: »

hws he been getting on actually? any of his old mans talent showing up yet?

Just his looks.

darkman2

Hard to see anything but a defeat tonight and ive got a feeling it will be a drubbing. Staunton, of course, will use his get out claus of 'preparing for the world cup' at the end. All bullsh*t in reality but it suits him and the FAI to keep on dishing that out after one attrocious performance after another. The Irish international setup is in a bad state.

Im_No_Superman

Andy Keogh on the right of midfield! wtf!

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Im_No_Superman wrote: »

Andy Keogh on the right of midfield! wtf!

Wat do you mean wtf?

Steve Staunton picks the team, or did you forget?

zAbbo

whats the lineups ? (both Ireland & Germany)

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Given

Kelly
Dunne
J O'Brien
Finnan

Keogh
Reid
Carsely
Zinedine

Doyle
Keane

KdjaCL

kick off delayed irish fans wont leave pubs till ant and dec is over.


kdjac

Im_No_Superman

DesF wrote: »

Wat do you mean wtf?

Steve Staunton picks the team, or did you forget?

Good point, nothing should surprise me at this stage! Well if McGeady is a "confidence" player its going to be at all time low now after being dropped for a player who isnt even a midfielder!

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KdjaCL wrote: »

kick off delayed irish fans wont leave pubs till ant and dec is over.

Stadium director says it's not

KdjaCL

DesF wrote: »

Stadium director says it's not

Not deyaled or ant and dec is over?


kdjac

zAbbo

Cmon the boys in green

3greenrizla's

~Rebel~ wrote: »

<edit>

scratch that, got mixed up with number of remaining games, forgot about the welshmen, nevermind!

so did I:o

3greenrizla's

can I just now before a ball is kicked.....


STAN MUST GO


COYBIG

~Rebel~

At last in this campaign we seem to be showing signs of fight and spirit, pity its come after the fat lady has sang.

Very impressed with our back 4. Finnan is playing great stuff at RB, Dunne is a rock as always, and O brian doesnt seem to have done much wrong which is impressive after so long out (and not really having played at CB at a high level). Kelly looks a totally different player to the one that always leaves us exposed at LB, well done to him.

Reid is playing great football, getting stuck in and spraying some great passes around. Carlsey playing well as well, still dont know what his card was for in the corner, looked like great play on his part as far as i could see..

Keogh's passing has been a bit dodge at times, but otherwise he's done very well, causing them a few problems, and his battling has been fantastic as well.

Kilbane is running around making a nuisance of himself, which is the best to be expected from him. Also pretty much our only tall target to release long balls to.

The lads up front haven't had much chances, Keane should have done much better from the short corner after he turned though.

KdjaCL

~Rebel~ wrote: »

Reid is playing great football, getting stuck in and spraying some great passes around. Carlsey playing well as well, still dont know what his card was for in the corner, looked like great play on his part as far as i could see..

.

Shame he is overweight and cant run.

We lucky germany not arsed with this game or we could get raped.


kdjac

irish life

If Andy Reid was playing in the Germany team hed probably be more influential than any of their players. What a player we have on our hands. So what if he looks over weight. The man's a gem.

KdjaCL

Didnt have enough to get a goal vs a decent defence, bit of praise for Stan :eek: O Brien played very well at CB. Felt if germany were arsed they could have scored.

irish life wrote: »

The man's a gem.

An 18 stone diamond? Hes got talent but hes overweight and is a professional footballer thats disgraceful. There is no excuse for being overweight when your meant to be an athlete.


kdjac

MisterAnarchy

Robbie Keane looked like he was drinking before the match,his touch was atrocious.
For a professional footballer his basic skills can more often be compared to those of a pub league player.

mikemac

KdjaCL wrote: »

An 18 stone diamond? Hes got talent but hes overweight and is a professional footballer thats disgraceful. There is no excuse for being overweight when your meant to be an athlete.

18 stone? Exaggeration I know but wikipaedia has him at 11stone.
You can be overweight and have fantastic stamina you know. Hell, I started a thread in fitness forum on this very topic last week.
I'm not so worried about his weight, he's as fit as any other footballer on the pitch tonight.

d22ontour

18 stone ? /puts on cartman voice ' he is not fat he is big boned dammit >_< ' He doesn't play like he is overweight me thinks , built a bit like Rooney was when he was apparently a pie eater.

_Kaiser_

""the business of qualification and football in this country is too serious to be left to a guy with L-plates on his back"

Gold from Dunphy. He's right tho!

Unearthly

Andy Reid puts in an excellent performance so lets call him fat :rolleyes:

Necronomicon

KdjaCL wrote: »

An 18 stone diamond? Hes got talent but hes overweight and is a professional footballer thats disgraceful. There is no excuse for being overweight when your meant to be an athlete.

He was still the best player on the pitch tonight, and whatever about his supposed weight problems, he's our most talented player IMO.

Dave!

Agreed with Rebel...

Andy Reid was immense, even if he is a fat f*cker

Richy Dunne is a bloody hero. Stephen Kelly was very impressive too.

I'm disgusted at Keane for making a hames of that 1-on-1. He has too much experience to do silly sh*t like that. Long was good when he came on, probs should have gone for the near post with his shot though. Doyle didn't do a thing really.

The Germans squandered their opportunities. Dunno how many of their shots went wildly over the bar! Our defenders kept them under pressure though.

KdjaCL

Necromomicon wrote: »

He was still the best player on the pitch tonight, and whatever about his supposed weight problems, he's our most talented player IMO.

lol

we should totally qualify now.......



kdjac

KdjaCL

DaveMcG wrote: »

The Germans squandered their opportunities. Dunno how many of their shots went wildly over the bar! Our defenders kept them under pressure though.

o brien


well done stan good call


kdjac

Daysha

I couldnt care less if Reid was 30 stone if it meant he keeps performing like he did tonight.

~Rebel~

yeah, if he's overweight then he's the fittest overweight person i've ever seen. Ran as much as anyone tonight. He did look like he might die towards the end alright, but thats even better, that he pushed himself to his limit and kept going or the whole game. KdjaCL you're particularly anti-Ireland tonight.

At this point its probably fair to say a lot of his appearance is down to his build rather then being fat. You cant do what he did tonight, and what he does every week at Charlton while overweight/unfit. Do you think he goes training every day, then has a feed of pints and pies every night or something? We do see overweight players on the pitch the odd time and lack of fitness is always obvious, usually after coming back from fitness. Id imagine it would actually be hard to be overweight/unfit at a professional club where your diet and training and strictly regimented. Remember back when he joined spurs, he had the same appearance then too and was being called fat, but apparantly was always among the highest in fitness levels tests.

He was proper fat for a while when he came back from injury and it really showed in his fitness levels, looked like death after 15 minutes running. (think this was around the time we played Chile)

eirebhoy

DaveMcG wrote: »

I'm disgusted at Keane for making a hames of that 1-on-1. He has too much experience to do silly sh*t like that.

Why are you disgusted?


One thing I'll never do at a football match is slag a footballer for making a mistake. I'll never groan at them for losing possession or shout at them for missing a chance. For some reason football fans love to do it. I really don't get it. You'd think they did it on purpose.

MrJoeSoap

Good philosophy but I just can't help myself sometimes! Does that extend to referees?

~Rebel~

You're right of course Eirebhoy, but its just so hard to look at a chance like that which most strikers would put away 9 times out of 10, the best/easiest chance of the game, which would have given us the win and not be kinda angry at Keane for fluffing his lines. He didnt really look at the races tonight did Keane. The size of the defenders i think neutralised him a lot, he might have been a bit imposed by them. Shortly after the second half started I was hoping himself and Keogh would be swapped. Keogh isn't massive, but he's tall enough at least, and Keane then could get the ball passed to his feet and run at goal from the left.

eirebhoy

MrJoeSoap wrote: »

Does that extend to referees?

That's where all my energy goes.

My drunken theory on the shouting at players thing is... If someone misplaces a pass 50 yards away, hundreds of people in the stands want to tell the people around them that they actually know who gave the ball away and the easiest way of doing that is the shout abuse at them. I'm sure everyone has sat close to the idiot who wants to do running commentary on the game. We all instinctively want to tell the people around us when we know something about the game that they don't.

That probably hasn't explained it too well but anyway.

raheny red

eirebhoy wrote: »

My drunken theory on the shouting at players thing is... If someone misplaces a pass 50 yards away

Most of time there is no need for that 50 yard pass, a squared pass to a player 5 yards will suffice 90% of the time. That's the most frustrating thing for me in a game of ball when a player doesn't make that simple pass.

Mr.Nice Guy

Was a gutsy performance but Stan remains in the job which, to me anyway, is the worst result.

sprinkles

Keogh was awful and should have been off at half time (or not have started out of position in the first place). I mean why was McGeady on the bench - a player who get champions league football and plays in that position and a player who earns his trade in the championship picked ahead of him?? The mind boggles.

Anyway I was amazed that he lasted 80 minutes and I think McGeady did quite well when he came on.

Reid was awesome. Cracking player. Kilbane was dreadful again. And when are we going to stop those stupid long kickouts aimed at him. I think we won posession twice from it tonight, most of the time we ended up back were we stared.

Some good individual performances but the team don't know where they are going. I'm convinced - Stan has no plan. Please god get him out now!!!

~Rebel~

sprinkles wrote: »

Keogh was awful and should have been off at half time (or not have started out of position in the first place). I mean why was McGeady on the bench - a player who get champions league football and plays in that position and a player who earns his trade in the championship picked ahead of him?? The mind boggles.

Really? I was very impressed with him under the circumstances. He fought very well for the ball, put in some great tackles. He's not a winger so its tough to expect him to naturally be able to take players on, but towards the end as his confidence grew he had some nice runs, particularly the one where he burst between 2 germans, lost his footing a little and then pulled the ball back to the edge of the box for a teammate. He did very well providing an outlet on the right, was always out there making himself available.

McGeady has been absolutely terrible the last few games, and IMO Keogh did much better then McGeady has in his past few games. Lets be honest, he's looked a totally different player for Ireland then he has for Celtic. As Eirebhoy says, his confidence seems to be shot when he pulls on the (all) green jersey, and he cant do things he's normally good at. Tonight will do him good, came on for the end, had a horrible first touch when he gave away the throw, but the next time he got the ball was more composed, when he beat the man and fizzed in a good cross. Hopefully this cameo will stand him in good stead for his future career. At this point its best to ease him into i think, with as little pressure as possible.

redspider

Ireland 0-0 Germany

A fairly okay display from Ireland last night. Germany did have more chances, but either team could have finished up with a 1-0 result. A draw was the fair result and was what the Germans were after to qualify. It wasnt a bad result for Ireland either.

Some comments on the individual displays:

Given - wasnt really troubled all night as there wasnt a direct on-target shot tat he had to save.

Finnan - very good, as he usually is, although himself and Keogh didnt have a good understanding to get down the right side and unlock the Germans

Dunne - excellent again and did all that was asked off him, although he was 'saved' on one occasion by Kelly

Joe O'Brien - a top class performance for a guy who was selected out of club position (where he's a right back). he gave his all, made some last ditch tackles, blocks, etc.

Kelly - did a good job, covered well, although he's not a type of player that gets forward. His defensive duties were carried out with aplomb though and he was constantly covering.

Keogh - he tried, but he gave the ball away a lot although I felt he improved as the game went on. He was double-marked at times but didnt have the vision to get himself out of such situations, and should have looked for a pass back to Finnan, and tried some one-two's, etc. The question is, was he better than McGeady has been? I would have to say yes, as poor Aiden was awful in the last couple of matches.

Carlsey - did all the necessary stuff in the middle of the park from a defensive aspect, aided by Reid of course. Unfortunately, he doesnt have enough creative ability, but as a holding/covering defensive midfielder he did a good job.

Andy Reid - did an excellent job, got his passing game going, and was the most ambitious player for Ireland, sometimes too ambitious pehaps. His defensive game was good as well and he got stuck in. People may say that he's fat, but a lot is to do with his build, as he's small and stocky, and perhaps muscular. He ran his socks off so no-one can say that he is unfit. I'd say he ran twice as far as the 'thin and fit' Doyle.

Kilbane - well, I give out about him constantly, but he did have a reasonable game, and showed his guts for Ireland by getting the stiches in the eyebrow and playing on. Creativelly, he doesnt have enough for us I think and I think long-term, Staunton shold be thinking about dropping him.

Doyle - I think he was far too quiet. He's been having a quiet season for Reading as well, and he didnt seem to over-exert himself in terms of getting into this game. I suppose, he realises that Ireland aren't going to qualify, but it is dissapointing all the same. Himself and Robbie don't seem to be on the same wavelength.

Robbie Keane - did okay, but was never going to be able to beat the German defenders in the air. He had way tooo much thinking time for those chances and fluffed them. Half-chances are better for him. Robbie still plays his best football for Spurs though, and this trend is unfortunately continuing. He was probably better than Doyle, but they didnt link up that well. Nevertheless, he has to be an ever-present in the irish team until someone else starts looking a lot lot better.

Long - He did well, and looked more lively than Doyle and more of a threat. A pity that pass was behind him from McGeady, and when he did get that chance I thought he could have taken a touch, been closer by 5 yards and would have been in a better position to trouble Lehman. One problem is that he is not getting (I presume) constant game time at Reading and this is holding him back. Maybe he would be better at a Charlton!

> Keogh was awful and should have been off at half time (or not have started out of position in the first place). I mean why was McGeady on the bench

McGeady was rightly on the bench as he was woeful in the last couple of matches and not able to either get past players, get in crosses or pass the ball to a colleague. Staunton was right I think to pick a lesser-known player. Keogh wasnt great, I agree wit you on that, but he got better as the game went on and this should be seen as a development game for him.

When Duff comes back, I can see Andy Reid playing right side perhaps. McGeady will get chances, as will Keogh, but these players really need to turn it on on the big stage and create chances or score them. For example, McGeady missed that chance at the end terribly. He should have at least got it on target and not 10 yards wide!

Overall, I think Ireland have a lot of players of similar standard and there are few players who are developing into 'world-class' players, or players good enough to grace any international team. I think qualification in the next world cup is possible, but it would be good to see some players develop further and fix their places. The current task in hand is to finish 3rd and one point against Germany was a step in the right direction.

Redspider

ps: Wales got beaten 3-1 by Cyprus

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eirebhoy wrote: »

We all instinctively want to tell the people around us when we know something about the game that they don't.

That's why we all post here!

Also, look at my location

<

---

I agree with eirebhoy totally :eek:

Requiem4adream

Was at the game, managed to sit right in front of Bertie (he looked tired and under pressure!!) and Mary McAleese, not to mention that smarmy Delaney chap from the FAI. Tbh they looked a bit disinterested...

As for the match itself, Robbie shoulda buried that 1 v 1. I couldnt believe it when i looked at the flag..... he had all day and acres of space. It's actually really IRRITATING the hell out of me the way he looks a World Beater for Spurs at times, composure and coolness personified in front of goal and then sometimes comes across as a bit of a headless chicken for Ireland. For example he was clinical against Liverpool, absolutely deadly, if he showed the same composure surely he'd have stuck it away.

Steve Finnan

Im not a liverpool fan, but i've always been a massive Steve Finnan fan, and last night just reminded me why. He's like the Roy Keane of right backs - nothing flash, passes the ball to feet and shows for a return pass. Gets stuck in, wins tons in the air.....basically does all the simple stuff so well. If we had 11 steve finnans in their respective positions we'd qualify for every tournament - if you can get the basics of the game right, the rest follows.

eirebhoy

Last night was Finnan's best game in a long time.

redspider mentioned Kelly not being the type of player to get forward. He actually loves to get forward. I don't think Stan likes to give his full backs too much freedom though.

tetsujin1979

eirebhoy wrote: »

Last night was Finnan's best game in a long time.

redspider mentioned Kelly not being the type of player to get forward. He actually loves to get forward. I don't think Stan likes to give his full backs too much freedom though.

I thought that, with O'Brien making his competitive debut out of position, and Kelly likewise, that Stan held Finnan back to cover for their inexperience. I'd imagine Dunne didn't go up for set pieces either for the same reason.

DesF

DesF wrote: »

Right, please answer this.

What is this crap about McGeady's confidence?

I don't buy it one little bit.

Every time the guy has a bad game, you wheel out this excuse for him.

Away games? His confidence is down.

Home games? He can't perform in front of a large Irish crowd because he has low confidence.

I kind of admire you, in a way, he plays for the club you support, and you see him put in decent displays week-in week-out for them. But it's the SPL. Now, I reckon I'm going to get jumped all over for saying that, but I'm not actually having a go.

It's the Liam Miller syndrome, imo. Looks good in the SPL, has one or two decent displays at Parkhead for Celtic in the CL, and suddenly he's the 'next big thing'.

When, exactly, or how, exactly, is McGeady going to regain his famous confidence? Should Ireland play a few games behind closed doors? Oh no, then the excuse will be he's not used to a crowd. Play a home game? Oh no, then the Irish crowd will be on his back. Play a couple of away games, oh no, confidence again, for some reason. Home friendly? Oh no, there's that large Irish crowd, full of expectation again.

What about an away friendly against an obviously disinterested side. Ah yes, play him against a team who don't care, then he'll shine, maybe get his confidence back.

What about after that? Ah no, his confidence is gone again.

Confidence, schmonfidence. He's put in too many below par displays for Ireland in important games, he's just not up to it.

hear hear seconded! pat yourself on the back now for telling it like it is.

DesF

DesF wrote: »

ZOMG!!11111!!one!11!ELEVEN!11!

Don't be so unpatriotic.

Now, seriously.

Fact is this.

FAIlure won't be sacking Stevie.

Stevie won't be walking away.

He's going to be Ireland manager for the WC Quals.

People need to start accepting that as a fact.

thats twice in the one discussion!! well done sir!

PHB

Finnan was cracking last night, Keane I thought was good, with no wing play at all, he was the best chance we had, and did well imo. Unfortunate about the offside thing though

I can't believe nobodies mentioned this so far, it was the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. At the time of the first substitution, the announcer started off by saying,
'And now a substitution for West .... for Germany"

Stans tactic of hitting the ball up to Kilbane and hoping to win the knockon was all we did for the first half. It was shocking stuff, and was clearly his gameplan. Shocking stuff. Also, Metzelder is at least 7 foot tall, how Keane managed to win just one header is beyond me.