Republic of Ireland Team Talk/News/Rumours 2017

OldMrBrennan83

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eire4

Tyson Fury wrote: »

Hopefully Brady will get a move in January.

Agreed it would be good to see him back in the top flight as clearly there is no way Norwich are going back up this season the way they are playing.

johnnyryan89

Patww79 wrote: »

I'd have world cup at 24 and euros at 16. It's all too devalued with more.

This

While the euros was great an all the fact you can finish third in qualifying and the group stages but still make it to the knock out stages kinda devalues the whole tournament a bit.

noodler

I'd be shocked if the expanded tournament for the Euros wasn't here to stay.

Lotsa of ppl didn't think it was a vintage competition but I don't think it has to do with the expanded qualifying.

Teams like NI, Wales and Iceland would likely have qualified regardless.

Like another poster said, any principles I had about it were fairly pushed to the background when Wes and Robbie scores those goals.

Dirty Dingus McGee

The expanded Euro's makes each group game less meaningful and takes all the bite out of the group stages.From a neutral perspective it was truly terrible tournament as bad as South Africa 2010.

The expanded 48 team world cup is going to be a disaster not only will the tournament itself be ruined by having too many **** teams in it and meaningless games but the qualifying will be ruined as it will be too easy to qualify and take away the bite from those games and thus further ruining international football.

johnnyryan89

One thing for sure is Delaney and Co will be over the moon with a 48 team world cup after the money they made from the recent expanded euros.

BullBlackNova

Ferris_Bueller wrote: »

On the subject of having more teams in the tournament, what do people think of FIFAs plans to have more teams at the world cup?

Part of me feels like it shouldn't happen, but then again it would be great to have more teams that don't regularly appear at a world cup, and as we witnessed ourselves this year regardless of if you finish 1st or 3rd in your group to qualify, the excitement is what is remembered.

The euros was a success for countries like ourselves, Iceland, Wales, the North etc. but overall I found the standard of the matches was a bit lower than previous years or at least most of the games themselves were less entertaining from a neutrals perspective. Hard to know whether this is because there was more teams or if it just wasn't the best tournament.

48 teams just seems a bit messy to me, the same with the 24 team Euros. 16/32/64, etc makes sense because it gives everything a fairly natural structure and doesn't result in 3rd place sides getting through in some groups and not others, etc.

I'd have stuck with 16 in the Euros and 32 in the WC, but since the expansion seems inevitable, I'd nearly rather a 64 team WC. 16 groups of 4, a 32 team knockout round or (god forbid...) a second group stage.

Or maybe a pre-group stage knock-out tournament? We could refer to it as 'qualifying', make it continent specific and stage over the two years before the tournament takes place to give everyone the chance of taking part but ensure that the best actually make it into the final stages to keep things exctiting...

8-10

I'm all in favour of expansion. Doubling in size to 32 teams in the 1980's did wonders for the competition.

Dirty Dingus McGee

8-10 wrote: »

I'm all in favour of expansion. Doubling in size to 32 teams in the 1980's did wonders for the competition.

It was expanded to 32 in 1998.

If you take away the achievement of qualifying for the world cup then it lessens the entire competition.

OldMrBrennan83

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Wilberto

BullBlackNova wrote: »

48 teams just seems a bit messy to me, the same with the 24 team Euros. 16/32/64, etc makes sense because it gives everything a fairly natural structure and doesn't result in 3rd place sides getting through in some groups and not others, etc.

To be fair, it'll be far less messy then the Euros. The structure is supposed to be in the style of 16 groups of three making it very straightforward. Presumably the winners of each group advance to a round of last sixteen.

That said, actually it'll probably be the top two teams of each group as this way, unless I've miscounted, the finalists will have played the exact same amount of games as they would have in previous world cups. There'll be one team from each group missing out on a group stage fixture as compared to previous ones, but considering most of these teams probably wouldn't even be there anyway if it wasn't for the expansion, you could say that they've actually gained two matches.

BullBlackNova

Wilberto wrote: »

To be fair, it'll be far less messy then the Euros. The structure is supposed to be in the style of 16 groups of three making it very straightforward. Presumably the winners of each group advance to a round of last sixteen.

That said, actually it'll probably be the top two teams of each group as this way, unless I've miscounted, the finalists will have played the exact same amount of games as they would have in previous world cups. There'll be one team from each group missing out on a group stage fixture as compared to previous ones, but considering most of these teams probably wouldn't even be there anyway if it wasn't for the expansion, you could say that they've actually gained two matches.

Interesting way to structure a tournament - it'll surely in a heap of dead rubber ties in the last round of fixtures, though? I guess there's no avoiding it.

Wilberto

BullBlackNova wrote: »

Interesting way to structure a tournament - it'll surely in a heap of dead rubber ties in the last round of fixtures, though? I guess there's no avoiding it.

Not if the top two get through to the next round. This way, one win should be enough to get you through (unless there's that cycle of victories and everyone in the group ends up on three points), meaning that every game is vital, either to ensure you qualify, of to finish top and get a favourable draw.

8-10

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

It was expanded to 32 in 1998.

If you take away the achievement of qualifying for the world cup then it lessens the entire competition.

Apologies I was thinking of the previous expansion from 16 to 24, which as I said was quite a success I thought.

There's still less than 16 teams actually capable of winning it but I presume people don't want to go back to a competition of 16 again?

48 in the tournament would be great. Give smaller nations a much better chance of improving their footballing ability.

Dirty Dingus McGee

8-10 wrote: »

Apologies I was thinking of the previous expansion from 16 to 24, which as I said was quite a success I thought.

There's still less than 16 teams actually capable of winning it but I presume people don't want to go back to a competition of 16 again?

48 in the tournament would be great. Give smaller nations a much better chance of improving their footballing ability.

It'll make the goal of qualifying less great and less of an achievement and if anything it will stifle improvement as these smaller nations won't actually have to improve to qualify.

When you here Alejandro Moreno (from Venezuela ) and Shaka Hislop (from Trinidad and Tobago) on ESPN being opposed to this despite their own countries benefiting from it the maybe FIFA need to consider that the achievement of qualifying is part of what makes the world cup great and reducing that achievement reduces the competition as a whole.

This is being done almost certainly to ensure China and possibly India qualify for future tournaments.

8-10

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

FIFA need to consider that the achievement of qualifying is part of what makes the world cup great and reducing that achievement reduces the competition as a whole.

And what I'm saying is that they did exactly that in the 1980's and 1990's and the competition is as great as ever.

There were great tournaments before 1982 I'm sure, but there's been really good ones since also.

And smaller nations have definitely improved in quality since the last couple of expansions, to say their improvement has been stifled is just wrong when you look at some of the nations in recent years in Europe and Africa

Dirty Dingus McGee

8-10 wrote: »

And what I'm saying is that they did exactly that in the 1980's and 1990's and the competition is as great as ever.

There were great tournaments before 1982 I'm sure, but there's been really good ones since also.

And smaller nations have definitely improved in quality since the last couple of expansions, to say their improvement has been stifled is just wrong when you look at some of the nations in recent years in Europe and Africa

Expanding the Euros to 24 has just added another layer of mediocrity to the tournament the same I think will happen to an expanded world cup, there are always a couple of really crap teams from each confederation in each world cup adding more won't help the tournament.

The World Cup and Euros expansion in the 90's had to happen because of the addition of around around 20 new countries to the European confederation and quite a number of these new countries were decent sides.

I don't think there has been so much improvement to the game across the world that adding more teams to the world cup will help it.

noodler

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

Expanding the Euros to 24 has just added another layer of mediocrity to the tournament the same I think will happen to an expanded world cup, there are always a couple of really crap teams from each confederation in each world cup adding more won't help the tournament.

The World Cup and Euros expansion in the 90's had to happen because of the addition of around around 20 new countries to the European confederation and quite a number of these new countries were decent sides.

I don't think there has been so much improvement to the game across the world that adding more teams to the world cup will help it.

Again, not really sure it was a poor Euros because of the expansion.

Sure look who eventually won the thing. Hardly set the world alight did they?

There was not an outstanding side and that's not the fault of the teams that got in via the play offs

Iceland were criticised by many fornhow hey play but they topped their qualification group. Would have qualified anyway.


Europe has plenty of good teams, same massibe dilution of quality argument that is being made at an expanded world doesn't really apply IMO. Certainly.nowhere to the same extent.

Dirty Dingus McGee

noodler wrote: »

Again, not really sure it was a poor Euros because of the expansion.

Sure look who eventually won the thing. Hardly set the world alight did they?

There was not an outstanding side and that's not the fault of the teams that got in via the play offs

Iceland were criticised by many fornhow hey play but they topped their qualification group. Would have qualified anyway.


Europe has plenty of good teams, same massibe dilution of quality argument that is being made at an expanded world doesn't really apply IMO. Certainly.nowhere to the same extent.

The euros were poor because you could afford to lose 1 game and it made no difference regarding qualifying for the knockout stages.It resulted in a lot of meaningless games and less edge to the group stages.This is what will probably happen with a 48 team world cup as it's an awkward number.

Most of the places for the expanded world cup will not be going to Europe and having extra teams from Africa,Asia and CONCACAF will not improve anything.

weldoninhio

Any danger of chatting about the ROI team?? Came in and saw there was 15/20 messages since this morning and thought I'd missed a big story.

The Talking Bread

I am pretty confident a conversation about the prospect of expanded international tournaments is pretty relevant to the Irish team.............. But if you want to add something to the table feel free.

Dempsey

An expanded tournament is exactly what Irish fans want. Results in more days on the sesh in a foreign country than ever before

It will be an addition of teams setting up not to lose and when they manage to pull it off, countries will celebrate these mediocre achievements like they won silverware.

applehunter

weldoninhio wrote: »

Any danger of chatting about the ROI team?? Came in and saw there was 15/20 messages since this morning and thought I'd missed a big story.

You're still a langball is still the top story.

ROI me bollix.

Dots1982

Anybody know how many extra european teams there will be with an expanded tournament?

The Talking Bread

McClean just signed a new deal with West Brom until 2019. Looks very settled, career and playing wise, these days, even twitter wise!

Worztron

The Talking Bread wrote: »

McClean just signed a new deal with West Brom until 2019. Looks very settled, career and playing wise, these days, even twitter wise!

Hi TTB. Did he make a new Twitter account?

OldMrBrennan83

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The Talking Bread

Dots1982 wrote: »

Anybody know how many extra european teams there will be with an expanded tournament?

ssssshhhhhh, don't be mentioning international tournaments on this forum!

I would imagine there wouldn't be a whole lot (if the original concept to expanding to 40 teams came about)
My guess would be 2 of each of Asia, Africa, Europe, 2 South American,

At the moment, Russia WC gives out 13 European spots (14 if including Russia), 5 African, 4 Asian, 3 North American/Cent American etc, 4 South American.

Then the further 2 spaces made up of playoffs between the latter 3 confederations and Oceania.

Maybe Oceania would get one definite position and perhaps Europe might get 3 instead of 2.


Not even going to guestimate how many extra spaces if it is expanded to 48 teams but for Europe you could be looking at as many as 18-20 places in 2026 if it goes ahead.

This whole expansion is first and foremost a money making enterprise by FIFA, no matter how they paint it up. The money is in Asia and even Africa to a certain degree (tv rights, sponsorship, general population) so they will be the main zones to concentrate on.

OldMrBrennan83

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Mantis Toboggan

I wonder would we ever see qualifying scraped and just a mega tournament every 4 years. Similar to the six nations. No qualifying, same teams each time.

Dots1982

Patww79 wrote: »

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If I was in FIFA I would want China in as well. Their purpose is to grow the game. To achieve this they should do everything they can to have a huge country like China to the tournament.

Don't expect to get much thanks for this but there is no shame in a sporting body expanding their sport.

The Talking Bread

Worztron wrote: »

Hi TTB. Did he make a new Twitter account?

ha, why did he delete his?! I was just jesting re the fact he hasn't been the focus of those repetitive Balls.ie articles everytime he scratches his arse on twitter (metaphor!) as of late!

Maybe it was him who set up the fake account sprading the rumour of the Queens death!

Re him being dropped, I don't think its that strange. Thats the nature of top flight squad football these days. But I imagine WB acknowledge he may be a bit frustrated and wish to reaffirm their commitment to him.
The likes of Brunt, Fletcher and Morrison are the wrong side of 30 so they need to keep someone like McClean happy also.

OldMrBrennan83

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OldMrBrennan83

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Worztron

The Talking Bread wrote: »

ha, why did he delete his?! I was just jesting re the fact he hasn't been the focus of those repetitive Balls.ie articles everytime he scratches his arse on twitter (metaphor!) as of late! ...

James McClean Twitter account deleted after controversial Brexit-related tweet http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/sport/james-mcclean-twitter-account-deleted-after-controversial-brexit-related-tweet-741628.html

It seemed over the top to delete his account.

The Talking Bread

Worztron wrote: »

James McClean Twitter account deleted after controversial Brexit-related tweet http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/sport/james-mcclean-twitter-account-deleted-after-controversial-brexit-related-tweet-741628.html

It seemed over the top to delete his account.

He doesn't do himself any favours does he. His intentions are good, heartfelt, sensible most of the time even, but given the nature of the game and where he plays it and how much he gets paid for it, he should knuckle down for the next 7/8 years or however long more he has left in him and then release the political activist in him.

yabadabado

Ryan Manning starts for QPR today.Good to see a few young Irish lads making progress.

TheCitizen

The Talking Bread wrote: »

He doesn't do himself any favours does he. His intentions are good, heartfelt, sensible most of the time even, but given the nature of the game and where he plays it and how much he gets paid for it, he should knuckle down for the next 7/8 years or however long more he has left in him and then release the political activist in him.

He said nothing wrong there. Is it unacceptable to declare the notional wish for a United Ireland? Freedom of speech in Britain seems to be a prescribed right afforded only to some these days.

Mantis Toboggan

Shane long finally bags a goal, important one that.

The Talking Bread

TheCitizen wrote: »

The Talking Bread wrote: »

He doesn't do himself any favours does he. His intentions are good, heartfelt, sensible most of the time even, but given the nature of the game and where he plays it and how much he gets paid for it, he should knuckle down for the next 7/8 years or however long more he has left in him and then release the political activist in him.

He said nothing wrong there. Is it unacceptable to declare the notional wish for a United Ireland? Freedom of speech in Britain seems to be a prescribed right afforded only to some these days.

I never said he said anything wrong.......... read my post properly perhaps

yabadabado

Did he say you did say he said something wrong:eek:

The Talking Bread

I just kind of got that impression but tbh I don't care! I'm merely saying it's of no benefit to him angering a few ignorant morons on the terraces and on social media.
He is well entitled to say what he says, has great reason to given his experience but I think for his own career it isn't worth it.

Let's leave it at that.

TheCitizen

The Talking Bread wrote: »

I just kind of got that impression but tbh I don't care! I'm merely saying it's of no benefit to him angering a few ignorant morons on the terraces and on social media.
He is well entitled to say what he says, has great reason to given his experience but I think for his own career it isn't worth it.

Let's leave it at that.

What McClean said wasn't the least bit inflammatory. If someone has a problem with what he said there, they are the one's with the problem.

The Talking Bread

Again, I don't find it inflammatory nor should any logical person. I was speaking in generalised terms about his opinions stoking up morons on social media and on terraces. And it isn't worth the hassle for him.
If you can't see the point I am making here, just agree to disagree.
Thread is being needlessly derailed!

TheCitizen

The Talking Bread wrote: »

Again, I don't find it inflammatory nor should any logical person. I was speaking in generalised terms about his opinions stoking up morons on social media and on terraces. And it isn't worth the hassle for him.
If you can't see the point I am making here, just agree to disagree.
Thread is being needlessly derailed!

Where is the hassle for him, he had to delete his twitter account but he made his point and exposed them again. I don't think he's bothered by the morons and enjoys winding them up. I don't think it affects his career that he annoys the morons and that some of them boo him on the field or write nasty things on twitter.

Coillte_Bhoy

Galway's Ryan Manning made his debut for QPR today and was singled out for praise by Ian Holloway who thought he was 'outstanding'

eire4

The Talking Bread wrote: »

He doesn't do himself any favours does he. His intentions are good, heartfelt, sensible most of the time even, but given the nature of the game and where he plays it and how much he gets paid for it, he should knuckle down for the next 7/8 years or however long more he has left in him and then release the political activist in him.

The point really should be why was the account deleted. All he did was express his support for a united Ireland and post a picture of him with Martin McGuinness. Cannot really see where the issue is at all there.

The Talking Bread

eire4 wrote: »

The point really should be why was the account deleted. All he did was express his support for a united Ireland and post a picture of him with Martin McGuinness. Cannot really see where the issue is at all there.

He closed it himself? Why, did you think Twitter closed it?

eire4

The Talking Bread wrote: »

He closed it himself? Why, did you think Twitter closed it?

Yes I got the impression that twitter shut his account. Thanks for pointing that out.

The Talking Bread

eire4 wrote: »

Yes I got the impression that twitter shut his account. Thanks for pointing that out.

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic there!!