Test bla

Pro. F

Great choice of example teams for the pole and i agree with you about avoiding the player selection arguments.

First of all, i think any concern about entertainment value should be forgotten about here. The Irish national team has obviously always had a very limited resource of players to call upon, with the exception of a very few golden generations. And we don't have a tradition of playing any one particular style of football. Probably the only tradition we have is of good honest hard work and bravery from our players and that benefits any football style. So assuming we want to win the World Cup, whether we are entertaining or not becomes irrelevant imho. We should chose whichever style best suits our players.

Personally, I believe that the most effective style of football is possession football. This doesn't mean recklessly attacking football, just trying to hold onto possession when you have it. It doesn't compromise the defence, in fact it improves defence since the opposition has to win the ball first before they can try to attack, and it gives the best platform for creating chances.

However i do think that if you have extremely limited players that defensive football (ie where you don't try to hold onto the ball and only attack on the counter and are more reliant on set pieces) may be the only option. Greece have shown what it can achieve if the luck goes your way. But that's it, defensive football is massively reliant on luck.

So, are the players available to us so bad that we need to turn to defensive football and then largely rely on luck to win games?

In every positon except centre mid i believe we have good enough players to play possession football.

Central midfield is the problem. Andrews, Whealan, Gibson - are all extremely limited players and will never be able to hold onto possession no matter what the style of football the team tries to play (people who use the first Italy game to argue against this are using an example that is, imo, obviously invalid).

Carsley is the same although maybe a little better defensively.

McCann and Fahey are harder to judge as i've seen less of them. Both seem useful but i'd be doubtful that their ability and experience would be good enough to improve upon what we already have by much. The likes of Rowlands and McCarthy i've seen even less of so i don't honestly know for sure but on balance i think they're not likely to help us keep the ball better.


A. Reid playing wide wouldn't help us hold onto the ball any better when we're under pressure. Is he fit enough and defensively sound enough to play in the centre? I don't know, he should have been given a chance to show if he is or not in a friendly imo. I'll say for the sake of argument that he isn't.

S. Reid is good enough on the ball to help us play possession football imo. So that's one, frequently injured, central midfielder who has the technical ability to play possession football. To me it looks like we don't have an option while S Reid is injured. If/when he's back playing then i would want us to be holding onto the ball more. Until then i'm happy enough that we aim to do our own version of what Greece did in the EC.