Republic of Ireland Team 2023/24 [old thread]

Stan and Kenny in a league of their own no doubt but my memory is that Stans nightmare didn't go on for as long as Kenny's.

No they replaced Stan after one campaign as Denis O'Brien came in with his millions to help the FAI overpay on managers for the next ten years.

Just going on yesterday's news about the full-time scholarships that the lads are starting up. If you go on the €15k figure you could put 60 kids through full-time education/training for €900k a year. That's three full teams per year.

Imagine where we'd be if we took that route rather than pouring money into the pension funds of Trap and MON. That's before getting into the overpaid assistants with Keane supposedly on similar money that we can only pay our manager now.

I have a feeling the negative vibes around the next International window will squarely resolve the selection criteria for the next manager around a much more appropriate reality of trying to qualify for things. The party Kenny and his fans enjoyed is over.

The next manager shouldn’t get as much leeway as Kenny imo. We’ve gone from having one of the oldest international squads to the second youngest I think with the overhaul he was asked to do.

That should mean that a new manager can come in and continue the job and hopefully get more out of them.

We’ve little chance of qualifying directly from our group for the WC so we really need to start doing well in the nations league to have any chance.

I don't think consistently losing games sets you up for some big reveal in a tournament in 5 cycles time.

My own view is everyone in Irish football needs to wake up to the reality that the Nations League matters a very great deal, as it offers us a pathway to playoffs against nations in similar rankings brackets as ourselves. Poor performance there needs much greater scrutiny. In retrospect the thing that sunk Kenny was performing poorly in Nations League games. The groups proper (Greece and Luxembourg excepted) could largely be accepted, but not getting the job done in the Nations League leaves you with no outs.

I don't think the football media has fully grasped this yet, and the public definitely has not. They are seen as 'fancy friendlies' or 'kinda competitive' games. The UEFA landscape has changed, and the Nations League is designed for nations like ourselves that need more games against equivalent sides to improve.

2012 may have been poor, but we had the two finalists in our group. 2002 and 2016 were electric summers that delivered stunning unforgettable individual moments. That's what we are chasing. We can dismiss the "piss up" angle, but the fans tend to have some of the better times of their lives at these yokes. Plus the anticipation of a tournament you are in, the draw and the nervous energy before the first game. Being there is always going to be a million times better than not being there and waxing lyrical about 'playing football the right way' so we can eventually win the tournament when we make it decades later.

But the new appointment needs to perform acceptably in the Nations League. We need to get results from the off and a hard question needs to be asked after the initial Nations League cycle about whether it looks like it can work or not. You may have to part ways after the World Cup, but we need to understand that is essentially two cycles of competitive games in the time it used to take us to get through a single cycle. Everything is accelerated and we need to review and react much quicker than we did with Kenny.

C League teams…like Greece and Luxembourg?

Bar the loss in Armenia I thought our form in the last NL campaign was probably our level tbh. Think we underestimated Scotland and we did get a very good home result against them. Ukraine are also a very good team with technically better players than ours. I think the NL shows that the squad is just thoroughly average atm.

Some goon on that thread was going on about “LOI fanboy f##kwits”. In a rare moment of red mist descending I responded in kind and told him what he could do with himself and what I thought of him. I got a warning from a moderator and my post deleted. Now, I’ll admit, my language was intemperate, bot the mod was obviously fine with the first comment about LOI supporters. I made this point in a message to the mod, but of course he hadn’t the decency or the courage to respond. That thread is a sewer.

Ogbene scores

Parrot scored off the bench today.

Travers recalled back to Bournemouth

Ya he was good yesterday Collins. He has deserved the criticism of late but in fairness has settled little more.

Nice goal too. I like that he doesn't take that one touch too many that a a lot of players do and gets his shot away in a timely manner and has the accuracy. Not many have it.

They are. Just don’t think it’s on TV. LiveScore shows it as interrupted about ten minutes ago. No score about half way through second half.

EDIT - Better info below. I just turned on TV to see The Big Ban Theory. I’d rather have watched the rain in Albania

It's on the RTE News channel now anyway.

And they score; better finish = goal

That's also Nations League promotion sealed now too, will be in the A League next time round.

Looks good

But they're not the men's team. It's nice to see them do well and obviously i support any irish team but to compare them to the men's team or the media attention/general attention the men's team gets is just naivety.

Enjoy it for what it is and don't deminish their achievements by comparing it to the men's game.

Poyet making more comments about wanting to manage Ireland. He seems to be angling for a new contract with Greece and conjuring up a link with us out of nothing to move that along.

Troy Parrott started for Excelsior today and played 78 minutes.

Festy Ebosele starts for Udinese against Milan.