Republic of Ireland Team 2023/24 [old thread]

Is conor coventry any good?

Yes, no point continuing.

O’Shea as caretaker would be fine.

Sorry man, it’s over. He needs to be removed. You just get someone from the current staff to cover and you start the search without paralleling confusion and futility at the team level.

It’s also respectful of Kenny.

But the modern international game now is like chess. It's slow, methodical, possession based for the sake of it.

How often do we see a team work out to the wings to a good crossing position, but inside 3 passes its back at the keeper. All to keep possession. Sometimes taking the chance of putting a ball into the box might be the right thing to do. But every team plays to the same formula now. They are trying to play a Spanish 2010 era football, or PepBall, but they haven't got any players capable of doing it.

Look at our midfield last night. You want them guys to play possession, tippy tap football? Rte showed a highlight reel, or lowlight, of all the misplaced passes. They were pub league stuff. Awful. If you haven't got the ability to play that style of game, then you have to play to your strengths, which can only be hard work and getting in the face of your opponent. Like Inter did v City in the CL final. They were the inferior team, knew that, but had a game plan to try to stifle City. And it mostly worked.

We're not playing a progressive style. Passing it and keeping the ball for the sake of it are not progressive. There's next to no progression of the ball, little if any real sign of pressing to get possession back, there are generally 2 options for a pass, sideways or backwards. So very rarely is the formation ever fluid to enable any sort of quick passing, give and go type football or allow oveaps.

The 3 5 2 is really a 5 3 2 and very rigid too. At times it feels like we're sitting deep with 8 players.

It should be fluid enough to become a 3-4-3 at times, but there's nothing there to suggest Kenny has any willingness to try something remotely different. Nice guy, and I like the idea in theory, but in practice it's turgid, uninspiring, predictable shite.

It's absolutely no more progressive than lumping it up to the big man. It's entiirely risk averse and we only seem to be able to play when we're already behind, or when it's a big name team and they seem to take some extra motivation.

The saving grace of the group is the Netherlands are not nearly as talented as times pastnd koeman is very hit and miss so we could be going into those games looking to win imo

Let's remember.....Collins was dropped by Wolves and his appearances towards the end of the season were poor. He didn't cover himself in glory from a defensive point of view last night either.

The big pay off is far more than he deserves. Over 500k a year and only 1 decent win under his tenure. If someone tried to predict how bad a manager could have done post Mick, there's no way they'd predict this shambles. Remember, Mick's record was played 10, won 5, drawn 4, lost 1. And he's a past it manager who's had his day.

Are still trying to claim Lenihan and O'Dowda should have more caps despite not being good enough? Comical

The team would be in a worse state if every Irish professional player was being capped despite being significantly worse than other players simply so they have a nice cap total by their "prime".

No amount of caps would transform Lenihan into our most able performer.

Martin O'Neill gave 26 players their Irish debut. Not many made a mark, but to say he wasn't giving chances is absolute bullshit. Kenny had a fairly good pool of players at u21 level, and that's showing now in his squad selections

.

Look at our 2014ish u21 squad. Piss all of them made any sort of step up. Hendrick, Duffy, Lenihan and Doherty. (grealish was around then too, or at least being called). Some of our 2010-12ish players had started coming through and were getting into the squads. It was 2018.19 before any of our u21 players were making any sort of breakthrough at that level. If Collins, O'Shea, Evans, Obafemi and a handful of others were available to other managers, they would've been picked, but the players were had at that level for those years, excepting a very small number, were not at the level, and well below that of established players.

Mick was given one remit, get to the euros and move aside. His was a short term appointment and he was on course to meet the goal.

So yes, Kenny is giving young lads a chance, but he arguably has our most talented crop of young players at his disposal than any manager has had in a long time.

His continued omission of Manning is bizarre, for such a specialist position, that he has ignored someone who has excelled there in 2 of the last 4 seasons at a high level, done okay in 1 other and been injured in the other one, all for an aging winger who gets stuck in, or a right back who is not playing for club so he can play an other right back too. This is the type of stuff other managers got hammered for. He gave manning his debut, but he's featured in 1 competitive games in that time, started 1 firiendly and totalled 20 mins in 4 other games.

Kenny has to take his criticism too though. IT's not enough that hes an LoI man. I wanted him to succeed, and his remit was not merely qualification. I genuinely think he'd have been better with the u21s for longer in hindsight, and maybe doing something for the structures because we're always going to struggle until that's fixed no matter who is in charge.

It's not any sort of golden generation, but it's a crop of players who seem to have grown up learning to play football in the sense that it's not just about being direct. They're maligned now, but we'd probably kill for someone like Robbie Brady to be plying his trade at a low level Prem/Serie A/La Liga club, and we'd definitely love if a new Coleman suddenly appeared, but it's not likely. We do have a crop of players who are at a decent level though and with their clubs at least, seem to want to get foot on the ball and play a bit.

No

Good point. Sure Van Dyke scored a similar goal to Collins when he was playing for Celtic and he is better player than collins but no one ever played him in midfield as far as I know?

Honestly some people here want the entirety of football to go back about 30 years.

Some people seem to want Keane as he’s a no nonsense old school footballer, regardless of his actual managerial record, as if sticking the boot in will solve all of our problems.

Top level football has long since moved on and we will get nowhere with that approach imo.

I know jeff hendrick takes a lot of stick from Irish fans but in his prime he was far more talented than any of our midfielders these days.

And if you were forced to pick one CB to move up into the holding role it wouldn't even be Collins imo.

You keep defining a style change in a quote binary way.

It's either ponderous possession in our own half, weak underbelly and still only scoring from set pieces

OR

Whatever Mick, Trap and MON had us doing. Of course I don't agree that they were always hoofball either, there was definitely degrees within.