Slovakia vs Ireland, Nations League Playoff - Mod Note in OP

dr.kenneth noisewater

Vital Transformation wrote:

It's odd that RTÉ aren't handling the interviews themselves.

Nobody over there, they'd have to quarantine for 14 days if they did. sky are the official broadcaster but RTE have the rights to show qualifiers FTA as they're designated events

NewMan1982

PTH2009 wrote: »

Should a few older heads retire ??

Only if there’s a player of equal or better quality to replace them.

Play until you are no longer needed in my opinion.

beggars_bush

With a decent striker we'd have won 2-0.
But at least Kenny is getting them to play some decent footy

fullstop

kona wrote: »

It was ****in ****, kenny isnt even in the same galaxy as whats required here.

This is international football, not friday night in ****in oriel park.

You haven’t a ****ing clue in fairness to ya.

kona

Ah lads were away to Libya next .:eek:

secman

kona wrote: »

It was ****in ****, kenny isnt even in the same galaxy as whats required here.

This is international football, not friday night in ****in oriel park.

Best passing game from an irish team in about 10 years ...FFS

CalamariFritti

Kaden Cool Ramp wrote: »

what was said?

Not much really. Just something about a non playing staff member and how those players seemed to have been considered close contact after being a certain distance to that staff member. And that this distance would've been probably ok under UK rules (not a close contact) but our rules are stricter and so they couldn't play. Along those lines.

kona

fullstop wrote: »

You haven’t a ****ing clue in fairness to ya.

Ive more of a clue than you.

Kid.

LuckyLloyd

Kaden Cool Ramp wrote: »

what was said?

He compared Irish Public health rules negatively to those in the U.K., opining that they were too “stringent”. Implied he disagreed with the fact they weren’t available and mumbled something incoherent about distance.

A million ways to handle the line of questioning and he picked the wrong route

Kermit.de.frog

NewMan1982 wrote: »

What do you consider the strengths we need to be playing to?

When we are relying on Shane Duffy to nick us a goal you have to go long fairly often because there are no other options up front - we play now like we can pass it in to the net. We can't.

I think we will fall in to the trap where it's prettier but we always lose out on tournaments. San Marino play a passing game for goodness sake.

It's not miraculous.

If we had two decent prolific strikers and a class midfielder then by all means but right now we don't.

kona

secman wrote: »

Best passing game from an irish team in about 10 years ...FFS

Fanstastic stuff alright.

Can pass it around all ye want, the point is to put the ball into the goal.

fullstop

kona wrote: »

Kid.

Well you’re certainly acting like one.

RoryMac

RonanG86 wrote: »

Some comment about players having to self-isolate cos they were only 1.7m apart instead of 2m. I didn't really follow it that well if I'm honest.

Sounds to me like Idah & Connolly did something stupid and he doesn't want to publicly land them in it because we'll have to replace our forward line completely in the next couple of years and he needs them.

Not sure how you jump to the conclusion the players did something stupid, sounded clearly like a member of the backroom staff tested positive and the players were in close.contact with them. Thought I heard earlier it was a physio so understandable

kona

RonanG86 wrote: »

Cos we were so good for the three years before he came in, weren't we?

Was like the Jack Charlton days so it was.

Well sure isnt that a reason to defend him, sure we wernt that ****e.

Kermit.de.frog

kona wrote: »

Fanstastic stuff alright.

Can pass it around all ye want, the point is to put the ball into the goal.

This is my point. We'll be Scotland from 10 years a go. Isn't it lovely football? Just we won't go anywhere and will lose much more often.

At the end of the day we need better players and hopefully they come through but right now we need to play to our strengths.

scouserstation

Some of the comments here are hilarious saying Kenny needs to go back to oriel park and the league of Ireland is the same as conference level in England :pac: its time for the kids to log off and let the adults have a discussion about this, its way past your bedtimes children :pac:

NewMan1982

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

He compared Irish Public health rules negatively to those in the U.K., opining that they were too “stringent”. Implied he disagreed with the fact they weren’t available and mumbled something incoherent about distance.

A million ways to handle the line of questioning and he picked the wrong route

I follow the covid rules myself but I can completely understand his frustration. Connolly is probably one of the first name on his team sheet and he was ruled out over 30cm.

If you can’t see how that is frustrating and could lead to a frustrating comment after a loss then I don’t know.

tigger123

Best Irish performance I've seen in a long long time.

Gutted not to be going to the next stage, but there's a lot of positives we can take from that.

Fromvert

McGoldrick is our best creative player and the team needs to be focused on getting him on the ball as much as possible for the next campaign with willing runners ahead and to his sides. Play 4-5-1, with McGoldrick in the 10. Get pace ahead of him to keep defences back and that will get McGoldrick time and space on the ball.

He takes the ball so well, and his touch gets him by a player but he's usually too deep with nothing ahead of him to pass to.

kona

fullstop wrote: »

Well you’re certainly acting like one.

Well im sure some of the kids down the park can finish better than brown and hourihane.

At least hourihane stuck his pen.

Should go up to marino and see what dermo connolly is at.

Sheridan81

I thought it was poor stuff. Pundits need to cop on. Nil-nil versus an average Slovakia side missing key players doesn't indicate there are better days ahead. Look at the stats-they're in Slovakia's favour. We didn't really deserve to win and we didn't win. We almost never win against half-decent sides. Same old bog-standard, piss-poor rubbish.

The only reason we're in contention in the first place is because every Tom, Dick and Harry is being given a chance to qualify for tournaments nowadays. Even Scotland are still in it.

If Northern Ireland beat the Slovaks it'll just illustrate perfectly how bad we are.

Look lads, I'm done supporting Ireland. From now on, I'm sticking to Liverpool and I'm going to pretend to be French/German/Brazilian on here-whichever one suits best depending on the situation. I'd appreciate it if you played along, thanks.

Yours,
Sheridanio.

NewMan1982

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

When we are relying on Shane Duffy to nick us a goal you have to go long fairly often because there are no other options up front - we play now like we can pass it in to the net. We can't.

I think we will fall in to the trap where it's prettier but we always lose out on tournaments. San Marino play a passing game for goodness sake.

It's not miraculous.

If we had two decent prolific strikers and a class midfielder then by all means but right now we don't.

So what do you consider the strengths we should be playing to?

dr.kenneth noisewater

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

When we are relying on Shane Duffy to nick us a goal you have to go long fairly often because there are no other options up front - we play now like we can pass it in to the net. We can't.

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

I think we will fall in to the trap where it's prettier but we always lose out on tournaments. San Marino play a passing game for goodness sake.

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

It's not miraculous.

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

If we had two decent prolific strikers and a class midfielder then by all means but right now we don't.

So we should stick Duffy up top and lump it up to him?

Kermit.de.frog

NewMan1982 wrote: »

So what do you consider the strengths we should be playing to?

4-4-2 and get it as far up the pitch as quickly as possible route one.

fullstop

sugarman wrote: »

Not sure what youre getting at

As before while relying purely on Duffy to score it was always from corners and free kicks.

We're still doing that but also trying to play a bit when we have the ball.

At no point was Duffy getting onto balls from open play. In fact he was under strict instruction never to leave his own half in open play.

Can’t quite make out what his point is myself but can only assume he thinks Duffy should be playing up front as pong balls to him seems to be his preferred way of playing. ****ing bizarre.

Sheridan81

tigger123 wrote: »

Best Irish performance I've seen in a long long time.

I thought we were better at home against Denmark.

LowOdour

For all the talk about needing strikers that can put the ball in the net, still think that midfield is still the big problem. The midfield played Ok tonight at times, but very poor at times too...Hendrick playes some terrible balls on at least 2 occasions.

We neither have a very creative midfielder or an all-action midfielder who can up tempo of a game.
While we rely our forwards to make and score their own chances, then we may always struggle for goals, regardless of the talent there

fullstop

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

4-4-2 and get it as far up the pitch as quickly as possible route one.

Cutting edge stuff that. It’s a pity you didn’t get the job.

RonanG86

kona wrote: »

Fanstastic stuff alright.

Can pass it around all ye want, the point is to put the ball into the goal.

kona wrote: »

Well sure isnt that a reason to defend him, sure we wernt that ****e.

The point, Princess, is that the passing tactics didn't cause the lack of goals. Do you think he said to Hourihane "Right Conor, if you get a chance five yards from goal, try and daintily roll it in instead of sticking your foot through it. All part of the passing master plan?"

We played Gibraltar (who'd be beaten by a good Sunday League side) and Georgia (rubbish) twice each in the last qualifiers in the good, honest Irish way with none of this fancy foreign Communist passing lark, and managed to get three wins with an aggregate scoreline of 4-0. A team worth their salt would've put at least 10 past them across 4 games.

So the lack of goals is demonstrably not a product of poor tactics from Kenny.

This isn't difficult to understand, so I'm going to assume that you made up your mind about the manager before we'd even kicked a ball with him in charge.

kona

dr.kenneth noisewater wrote: »

So we should stick Duffy up top and lump it up to him?

Probably be lookin forward to a play off if we did.

Kermit.de.frog

dr.kenneth noisewater wrote: »

So we should stick Duffy up top and lump it up to him?

No, Shane Long to hang the ball up and wait for support. That is where we are as a team with the players we have.

Hopefully some of the younger talent comes through. We need at least one quality striker and one quality midfielder/playmaker.

You could argue McGoldrick is the latter but without a striker it's a hiding to nothing really as we saw tonight.

We just can't score goals at the moment.

BonnieSituation

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

He compared Irish Public health rules negatively to those in the U.K., opining that they were too “stringent”. Implied he disagreed with the fact they weren’t available and mumbled something incoherent about distance.

A million ways to handle the line of questioning and he picked the wrong route

TBF he said they were "more stringent".

It's not really the thing to get caught up on now after that performance is it though?

NewMan1982

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

4-4-2 and get it as far up the pitch as quickly as possible route one.

How do we get it up the pitch? A long ball from defence? It’s a bit vague so far.

Who’s up there to receive the long ball and what are they gonna do with it?

At the moment you seem to be proposing the same tactics the failed under Mick McCarthy in the last qualifiers and towards the end of MON.

Morrison J

pgj2015 wrote: »

:rolleyes:


have you seen Byrne play in the flesh? I have several times, he has what we need trust me. I agree though that he should move abroad again and test himself at a higher level.

Not sure why you're rolling your eyes. That's the level he's playing at realistically.

He's half decent but plenty to prove yet to say he's ready to play ahead of Browne or Molumby. Reminds me of people crying out for Daryl Horgan to start games when at Dundalk. No taking into account of the step up in level.

Sheridan81

Good result for France last night. Beat Ukraine 7-1. Hard luck on the result tonight chaps.

kona

RonanG86 wrote: »

The point, Princess, is that the passing tactics didn't cause the lack of goals. Do you think he said to Hourihane "Right Conor, if you get a chance five yards from goal, try and daintily roll it in instead of sticking your foot through it. All part of the passing master plan?"

We played Gibraltar (who'd be beaten by a good Sunday League side) and Georgia (rubbish) twice each in the last qualifiers in the good, honest Irish way with none of this fancy foreign Communist passing lark, and managed to get three wins with an aggregate scoreline of 4-0. A team worth their salt would've put at least 10 past them across 4 games.

So the lack of goals is demonstrably not a product of poor tactics from Kenny.

This isn't difficult to understand, so I'm going to assume that you made up your mind about the manager before we'd even kicked a ball with him in charge.

But princess, we won, can you understand that?

Hammer Archer

Sheridan81 wrote: »

I thought it was poor stuff. Pundits need to cop on. Nil-nil versus an average Slovakia side missing key players doesn't indicate there are better days ahead. Look at the stats-they're in Slovakia's favour. We didn't really deserve to win and we didn't win. We almost never win against half-decent sides. Same old bog-standard, piss-poor rubbish.

The only reason we're in contention in the first place is because every Tom, Dick and Harry is being given a chance to qualify for tournaments nowadays. Even Scotland are still in it.

If Northern Ireland beat the Slovaks it'll just illustrate perfectly how bad we are.

Look lads, I'm done supporting Ireland. From now on, I'm sticking to Liverpool and I'm going to pretend to be French/German/Brazilian on here-whichever one suits best depending on the situation. I'd appreciate it if you played along, thanks.

Yours,
Sheridanio.

You said it was going to be an easy win for Slovakia beforehand.

RonanG86

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

4-4-2 and get it as far up the pitch as quickly as possible route one.

That's exactly what we did completely unwaveringly for 3 years prior to Kenny (arguably longer as O'Neill did it quite a lot in the earlier part of his tenure, just not every game like he ended up doing) and our best competitive results were boring Denmark and Switzerland into draws. We couldn't score from open play in 180 minutes against Georgia playing like that. Georgia are not a good football team. If that's playing to our strengths then we might as well roll up the national football team.

About the only good point to that approach is that 2 up top would probably suit the forwards we have.

RoryMac

LowOdour wrote: »

For all the talk about needing strikers that can put the ball in the net, still think that midfield is still the big problem. The midfield played Ok tonight at times, but very poor at times too...Hendrick playes some terrible balls on at least 2 occasions.

We neither have a very creative midfielder or an all-action midfielder who can up temp of game.
While we rely our forwards to make and score their own chances, then we may always struggle for goals, regardless of the talent there

Agree 100%

We have no real presence in midfield, Slovakia strolled right through us all game. A solid midfield player would make all the difference to this team

BonnieSituation

That's the end of that thread now. Jesus, they really do just scramble out from the woodwork when they get a chance.

dr.kenneth noisewater

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

No, Shane Long to hang the ball up and wait for support. That is where we are as a team with the players we have.

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

Hopefully some of the younger talent comes through. We need at least one quality striker and one quality midfielder/playmaker.

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

You could argue McGoldrick is the latter but without a striker it's a hiding to nothing really as we saw tonight.

Kermit.de.frog wrote:

We just can't score goals at the moment.

Stone age stuff, hasn't worked for the previous 4 years doing that.

plibige

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

4-4-2 and get it as far up the pitch as quickly as possible route one.

And who in our team does that system benefit?

secman

kona wrote: »

Fanstastic stuff alright.

Can pass it around all ye want, the point is to put the ball into the goal.

No **** Sherlock.... but generally speaking you tend to have a better chance of doing so by keeping the ball and not hoofing it up in desperate hope and giving it away cheaply. We held on to the ball tonight better than we have in yonks..that's a starting point, we may have to wait for Parrott to get more game time, he's probably our best bet as a decent finisher..

The_Kew_Tour

It's easy see the people who only watch Ireland once every 4 years

Sheridan81

Hammer Archer wrote: »

You said it was going to be an easy win for Slovakia beforehand.

I admit I got the 'easy' part wrong.

Mr.Nice Guy

I don't get the outpouring of optimism really.

Kenny has now had 300 minutes of implementing his style and in all that time, against pretty average opposition, we've managed 1 goal - a Duffy header from a set-piece.

We were played off the park by a Bulgaria team that were well below us in the rankings, and the same thing happened against Finland. Tonight we took on a Slovakia side missing 3 of their most important players, most notably Skriniar, and we managed 3 shots on target in 120 minutes of football. For all the possession football talk, we were beaten on that metric 54% to 46% by Slovakia.

For years on this forum I read supporters bemoaning the more pragmatic approach of Trap, MON and McCarthy, lamenting that we really DID have the players who could do that style. Damn those dinosaur coaches we would be told. And yet our new coach who is associated with that very style tonight turned towards the more pragmatic players. This resulted in watching Hendrick pinging passes out to the mascots.

The question needs to be asked: what is the identity of this team under Kenny? If he wants to play possession football, why did he overlook the likes of Byrne and Cullen, players more suited to that style? If the answer is he doesn't believe those players are good enough at international level, then that begs the question why we have a coach with Kenny's philosophy at all.

Think about this. We actually replaced an experienced pragmatic coach who picked a pragmatic team, in favour of someone with a philosophy of possession-based football, who implemented this philosophy tonight by selecting a pragmatic side without any possession footballers in it.

A decent thirty minutes or so against a depleted Slovakia isn't my idea of turning a corner. We will get more of an idea in the next two games against Wales and Finland whether there are any signs of improvement. If Kenny still has no wins from his first 5 games then it will be reasonable to ask whether this man really is Irish football's messiah, or just a false prophet who is in way over his head.

adox

I thought it was an awful game overall myself. Two poor teams.
I thought Ireland had some decent spells and a couple of very nice moves which lead to good chances but I think the performance is being hugely over hyped on here and indeed by RTE.

I also agree with the poster who said Kenny handled the whole covid question really badly. It was a bizzare angle to take.

Very early days in his reign and there were glimpses of what we might see in the future but for me it was a poor game from two poor teams that gave the ball away very cheaply for the majority of the game.

kona

secman wrote: »

No **** Sherlock.... but generally speaking you tend to have a better chance of doing so by keeping the ball and not hoofing it up in desperate hope and giving it away cheaply. We held on to the ball tonight better than we have in yonks..that's a starting point, we may have to wait for Parrott to get more game time, he's probably our best bet as a decent finisher..

Yea, howd that work out for ye in the last few games.

****in rattling them in so they were :rolleyes:

That team couldnt score in cavan with their wallets out.


Well wait for parrot, thats our last hope. ****in rediculous.

But sure the lads with notions will.be jippin themselves when we become.a tidy Macedonia.

dr.kenneth noisewater

So Connolly and Idah were sitting 1.7 and 1.9 metres from the positive staff member on the flight over and couldn't play as per the42.ie

fullstop

Sheridan81 wrote: »

I admit I got the 'easy' part wrong.

Post up a screenshot of your bet there.