Shamrock Rovers FC Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread

Ebbs

I think people under estimate MON's importance in keeping this league fair. While I do think he is one of the top managers in the league he hasnt fallen into the same trap as other managers have. He has brought some of the best players at present in the league in from England/scotland/etc. Look at Twigg, McCormack, and Sivves. All done on the cheap.

If we had the likes of Nutsy, Doolin, Dolan, etc we would just go out in Jan and buy the best players in the league. The likes of Ndo, Ryan, North, Zayed etc would all just be sitting on our bench or used in some crazy rotation system.

While MON has bought from inside the league, he hasnt even come close to what other managers of the "rich" clubs done in the past. With our ever growing profit margins, I think the likes of Sligo, Derry and anyone else who wants to see the general standard of the league increase should be thanking their luck we have MoN.

dreamers75

Ebbs wrote: »

I think people under estimate MON's importance in keeping this league fair. While I do think he is one of the top managers in the league he hasnt fallen into the same trap as other managers have. He has brought some of the best players at present in the league in from England/scotland/etc. Look at Twigg, McCormack, and Sivves. All done on the cheap.

If we had the likes of Nutsy, Doolin, Dolan, etc we would just go out in Jan and buy the best players in the league. The likes of Ndo, Ryan, North, Zayed etc would all just be sitting on our bench or used in some crazy rotation system.

While MON has bought from inside the league, he hasnt even come close to what other managers of the "rich" clubs done in the past. With our ever growing profit margins, I think the likes of Sligo, Derry and anyone else who wants to see the general standard of the league increase should be thanking their luck we have MoN.

Twigg Shepard Kilduff O Neil, thats pretty much exactly what you said he wasnt doing

stovelid

dreamers75 wrote: »

Twigg Shepard Kilduff O Neil, thats pretty much exactly what you said he wasnt doing

They've all seen a lot of game time this season. Especially Twigg, Shep and GON. Killer has been used a lot mainly as a sub.

If you're talking about simply signing the decent players, fair enough but our squad is normal sized and we didn't sign them for what the likes of Nutsy would have in the good old days.

Ebbs

dreamers75 wrote: »

Twigg Shepard Kilduff O Neil, thats pretty much exactly what you said he wasnt doing

I said we're not doing what they'd do in the olden days of Shels, cork, drogs, Pats of buying everyone in the league. Having a big squad is fine, 50 games this season and such. The point is we're importing talent. Even out of the players you mentioned:

Twigg: Bought him from the sale of Ger O'B. Fantastic find.
O'Neill: Free Agent
Kilduff: At the AGM before he left Rovers, MON said he was a fantastic prospect and just couldnt allow him to rot on the bench for a season with the likes of Baker, twigg etc ahead of him. Said he would love to have him back at Rovers in a couple of years. Essentially it was like loaning him out.
Shep: Fair enough he was stolen from another team using the big money lure.

1 in 4 isnt bad.

dfx-

Almost all tickets sold today:eek:

dreamers75

Ebbs wrote: »

I said we're not doing what they'd do in the olden days of Shels, cork, drogs, Pats of buying everyone in the league. Having a big squad is fine, 50 games this season and such. The point is we're importing talent. Even out of the players you mentioned:

Twigg: Bought him from the sale of Ger O'B. Fantastic find.
O'Neill: Free Agent
Kilduff: At the AGM before he left Rovers, MON said he was a fantastic prospect and just couldnt allow him to rot on the bench for a season with the likes of Baker, twigg etc ahead of him. Said he would love to have him back at Rovers in a couple of years. Essentially it was like loaning him out.
Shep: Fair enough he was stolen from another team using the big money lure.

1 in 4 isnt bad.

But that 4 were close to being the best 4 in the league last year, so it is what you said you werent doing

stovelid

dfx- wrote: »

Almost all tickets sold today:eek:

The London Micks are coming out in force. We sold out our initial allocation today and the neutral (as in non-spurs but not our away section) sold out loads there too. That whole end will be "not Spurs.."

dfx-

All 1800 tickets sold..

I would've thought that was more than enough for a separate Rovers allocation. Is there some unknown-to-science black hole swallowing the tickets?:eek:

stovelid

Decent ticket offer for families:

20 quid for an adult and two kids.....

soma

Lads! No match thread posted v Spurs? Great night for your club, you should be shouting about it from the rooftops..?

Pal

imagine Rovers supporters are understandably apprehensive.

Potential drubbing by Spurs reserves.

dfx-

Pal wrote: »

imagine Rovers supporters are understandably apprehensive.

imagine Rovers supporters are en-route to the game and/or tucking into the 5th pint so far in Covent Garden

AgileMyth

dfx- wrote: »

imagine Rovers supporters are en-route to the game and/or tucking into the 5th pint so far in Covent Garden

Indeed. Real football fans would rather travel to games than start threads on the internets.:D

I can't believe I'm going to say this but...best of luck to Shams this evening. Hope ye beat them, but I'm sure the EPL fanboys will have the excuses well prepared anyways. :rolleyes:

_blank_

What time is the match?

dfx-

8.05

Excellent reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/sep/28/shamrock-rovers-europa-league

The Shamrock Rovers players who walk out at White Hart Lane on Thursday night will be attempting to fulfil an ambition that first animated the club just over 30 years ago. Back then the Dublin side's dream of becoming a European force fuelled an enterprise that briefly promised to radically alter Anglo-Irish footballing relations, but ultimately led to a chaotic demise from which the club is only now emerging.

In 1977, the former Leeds United midfielder John Giles stunned many by resigning as player-manager of West Bromwich Albion, turning his back on the English game and returning to Ireland, to try to transform Rovers into a European power. Rovers were owned by Giles's father-in-law, Louis Kilcoyne, who several years earlier had bought the club from the Cunningham family that had presided over its golden age in the 1950s and 60s. That was before the introduction of television convinced most Irish football fans to watch British football rather than the domestic game, their interest stoked by the sights of the European Cup being won by Celtic and a George Best-inspired Manchester United. Attendances at Irish club matches plummeted. The Giles-Kilcoyne project at Rovers attempted to reverse the trend.

Rovers reasoned that stemming the flow of fans to Britain meant stemming the flow of Irish players to Britain. So they invested heavily in keeping the best Irish young players at home and also persuaded experienced Irish internationals such as Eamon Dunphy, Paddy Mulligan and Ray Treacy to return from English clubs.

"It was an exciting time," recalls Jim Beglin, the former Rovers left-back who now commentates for ITV. "The plan was first to become regulars in European competition and then push on to the next level. Giles was obviously a superstar in Ireland and was still a fine player even then – and I was to find that he was also a top-class coach and a very demanding taskmaster."

Giles sought to cultivate a stylish brand of adventurous, passing football. Rovers won the FAI Cup in Giles's first season and became regulars in Europe. Their 7-0 aggregate thrashing of Fram Reykjavik in the first round of the 1982-83 Uefa Cup is the record European victory for a League of Ireland club.

"I remember after that all the lads waiting for word of the draw and hoping that we'd be pitted against Tottenham," recalls Beglin. "We didn't necessarily think we were going to beat them but we wanted the chance to show ourselves on that stage, to test how far we'd come. But instead we were drawn against the Romanian side University Craiova, and in those days trips to Eastern European teams were quite an ordeal."

Rovers lost 5-0 on aggregate.

Giles left soon after, complaining that the Irish football establishment resented Rovers' attempt to progress and rival clubs, like crabs in a bucket, conspired to keep everyone down. A particular complaint made by Rovers at the time regarded opponents' persistence with atrocious playing surfaces, partially to sabotage Rovers' passing aspirations. Rovers' record on the road contrasted with their dominant home form.

"Maybe tricks were tried but I think we also lacked a bit of nous," says Beglin. "We played some lovely stuff but other teams with more League of Ireland experience would just edge us out in the end."

It is testament to the calibre of Giles's schooling, however, that several of the young players he coached went on to play for clubs who prized tidy football: the midfielders Liam Buckley and Alan Campbell were snapped up by Racing Santander and Beglin became Bob Paisley's last signing for Liverpool, whom he helped to the Double in 1986.

"I owe an awful lot to Rovers," says Beglin. "I was there from 16 to 19 and they gave me a brilliant grounding. When I came to Liverpool I found that they were doing pretty much the same thing that Giles had been doing in Dublin."

Rovers found success after the departure of Giles, but the full-time structure was gradually wound down and the finesse phased out. A new manager, the savvy veteran Jim McLaughlin, hired a squad of local stalwarts who won four league titles in a row.

"They had the experience that we lacked and probably played in a less elaborate way but that was what it took to win in the League of Ireland," says Beglin. It was not attractive enough to wean the Irish public off British football and attendances stayed low. In 1987, Kilcoyne tore the heart out of the club's hard core of supporters by selling the stadium, Glenmalure Park, to property developers, who knocked it down and built apartments. Rovers were homeless.

For much of the next two decades the most decorated club in Ireland club played in temporary accommodation or shared grounds with Dublin rivals. Through mismanagement and legal wrangles over a proposed new stadium, the club accumulated debts that pushed it to the brink of oblivion. In 2005 it had to go to court to argue against the imposition of a winding up order, its debts having reached €2.4m. The club was allowed to stay afloat but was forcibly relegated to the second tier. In a surprise decision, the court handed the running of the club to a group of fans who had been raising funds to keep it alive. Those fans guided the club to promotion and financial health and still run the club now.

Financial health is not, of course, the same thing as wealth. Here is a stark indication of the disparity of resources between Rovers and Tottenham Hotspur: if the Irish champions were to beat Spurs in the Europa League, a tournament of which Harry Redknapp is openly disdainful, the €140,000 prize money they would pocket would be €40,000 more than they will get if they win the League of Ireland for a second year in a row. So while Redknapp is likely to rest his best players so they can concentrate on trying to qualify for the Champions League, his Rovers counterpart, Michael O'Neill, most certainly will not, even though his team are locked in an intense struggle for the domestic title with Sligo Rovers, with whom they are level on points at the top of the table with six matches to go.

"The financial rewards we get for doing well in Europe far outweigh anything we can get domestically so that's one of the reasons it is very difficult to prioritise one over the other," says O'Neill. "Our annual budget for the entire club is around €600,000: I imagine each individual Tottenham player is on multiples of that."

The Rovers players, all semi-professionals on 42-week contracts, are not motivated merely by money, of course: the sporting thrill of toppling players presumed to be far better than them would last much longer than any win bonus.

"A lot of our squad had trials or short contracts with English clubs when they were younger and it didn't happen for them so they came home to rebuild their careers," O'Neill says. "They'll want to show that it was a mistake to let them go."

The Rovers squad does not only feature Irish players: goalkeeper Ryan Thompson hopes his performance will bring him to the attention of Jamaica and top scorer Gary Twigg is a 27-year-old Glaswegian who counts Derby County, Airdrie United and Bristol Rovers among past employers. New recruit Rohan Ricketts was once of Tottenham.

The brightest prospect, though, is probably Enda Stevens, who has agreed to join Aston Villa once Rovers's European adventure concludes. The 21-year-old is a classy left-back with wonderful crossing ability. If he makes as big an impact in England as Beglin did, you'll be hearing plenty more about him. Possibly also from him, alongside Clive Tyldesley.

Pinturicchio

Des wrote: »

What time is the match?

8.05

dsmythy

Looks like a mixture of fringe, youth and returning from injury players will make up the Tottenham team. It's still an impressive sight.

TheRedDevil10

Rubin 1-1 PAOK 60mins gone http://www.firstrowsports.tv/watch/83309/1/watch-rubin-kazan-vs-paok.html

dsmythy

TheRedDevil10 wrote: »

Rubin 1-1 PAOK 60mins gone http://www.firstrowsports.tv/watch/83309/1/watch-rubin-kazan-vs-paok.html

Ended 2-2 in Russia.

edolan

Ebbs wrote: »

I think people under estimate MON's importance in keeping this league fair. While I do think he is one of the top managers in the league he hasnt fallen into the same trap as other managers have. He has brought some of the best players at present in the league in from England/scotland/etc. Look at Twigg, McCormack, and Sivves. All done on the cheap.

If we had the likes of Nutsy, Doolin, Dolan, etc we would just go out in Jan and buy the best players in the league. The likes of Ndo, Ryan, North, Zayed etc would all just be sitting on our bench or used in some crazy rotation system.

While MON has bought from inside the league, he hasnt even come close to what other managers of the "rich" clubs done in the past. With our ever growing profit margins, I think the likes of Sligo, Derry and anyone else who wants to see the general standard of the league increase should be thanking their luck we have MoN.

I hope O'Neill stays because I think he's so bad, if ye had Fenlon or Cook as manager ye'd have the league won already, his tactics and style of play is primitive to say the least.

dfx-

Delighted for him (Pic: George Kelly)

CiaranC

dfx-

They should sell that as a poster in the shop

Great to see Twigg leading His apostles on the steps in the chanting..

And He acknowledged them



Tell all the Bohs you know
that we've gone and won two in a row
then it's going to be three
and it's going to be four
then it's going to be five in a row.

dfx-

The weather can't be any worse in Kazan than it was putting in my visa application today. The lad said somewhere around 150-200 applications..

stovelid

Season tickets on sale. Decent value.



Info and booking:

http://www.shamrockrovers.ie/news/35-news/2303-2012-season-tickets-on-sale

dfx-

A few pics from new shirt/Kazan...

uch

Love that Jersey, must get upto the shop tomorrow for one.

stovelid

Nice that Woodies are still on the back....

dfx-

Someone else must be gone from the back to fit Woodies in - the srfc¦¦tallaght part, the Maldron or more likely Mooney's?

stovelid

I thought Mooneys had gone bust...?

dfx-

Have they? After they 'replaced' EP Mooney? That's probably something I should've noticed..:eek:

stovelid

dfx- wrote: »

Have they? After they 'replaced' EP Mooney? That's probably something I should've noticed..:eek:

Nah, you're right. I was thinking of EP Mooneys.

The Mooneys site is epmooneys.... :pac:

Tiocfaidh Armani

How much is this deal worth?

dfx-

http://www.rte.ie/ten/tvawards2011/vote.html

Go forth and contribute (for Rovers)

Hard Worker

Swedish under 21 international goalkeeper signed from Newcastle. Some more good goalkeeper news on the way later also.

dfx-

IFTA tv moment of the year:)

http://www.shamrockrovers.ie/news/35-news/2413-sullys-goal-wins-ifta-tv-moment-of-the-year

SantryRed

dfx- wrote: »

IFTA tv moment of the year:)

http://www.shamrockrovers.ie/news/35-news/2413-sullys-goal-wins-ifta-tv-moment-of-the-year

This makes me so fcuking happy considering RTE gave the league two fingers by not showing the 2nd leg. Fcuk you RTE.

dsmythy

Some nice free advertising there.

dfx-

I make the squad as being..

Jansson
Winn
Pieterse (?)

Oman
Powell
Gannon
Gilbert
Gartland
Sives
Memery
Hawkins

Turner
Rice
Finn
McCabe
SOD
McCormack
Dennehy
Brennan

Twigg
Kilduff
GON
Greene
Kavanagh

Excellent midfield and upfront...decent keepers by the looks of it...and I'll reserve judgement on the defence before they gel (bar Sives). Gannon will be an excellent player, Memery not bad either. Some interesting trials against Wexford...Dean Someoneorother looked decent..

stovelid

Reyaad Pieterse?

Gannon should easily make the step up this season.

Raskolnikov

dfx- wrote: »

I make the squad of 22 as being..

Jansson
Winn

Oman
Powell
Gannon
Gartland
Sives
Memery
Hawkins

Turner
Rice
Finn
McCabe
SOD
McCormack
Dennehy
Brennan

Twigg
Kilduff
GON
Greene
Kavanagh

Excellent midfield and upfront...decent keepers by the looks of it...and I'll reserve judgement on the defence before they gel (bar Sives). Gannon will be an excellent player, Memery not bad either. Some interesting trials against Wexford...Dean Someoneorother looked decent..

Gilbert?

dfx-

Gilbert - 23

Is Pieterse signed or a prospect considering all the red tape?

stovelid

dfx- wrote: »

Is Pieterse signed or a prospect considering all the red tape?

Thought they were just waiting for work permit? Maybe I heard wrong.

dfx-

Louis Kilcoyne dead according to RTÉ..

Pedro K

dfx- wrote: »

Louis Kilcoyne dead according to RTÉ..

I won't shed any tears for him anyway.

dreamers75

dfx- wrote: »

Louis Kilcoyne dead according to RTÉ..

Neither a silence or appluase would be a good idea on friday.

dfx-

I think Rovers fans' opinions on the matter will be heard at some stage on Friday night whether there's a minute applause etc either way.

monkey9

RIP Louis! A great man!!!

dreamers75

Jaysis Daryl Kavanagh getting the full wrath of rovers fans on twitter.

monkey9

dreamers75 wrote: »

Jaysis Daryl Kavanagh getting the full wrath of rovers fans on twitter.

Why? Guessing he gave it the old RIP lark?