Republic of Ireland General Discussion Thread 2024 [use match threads for games]

Think we need to move up three places in the rankings to be second seeds in the qualifiers which might help our chances of making the playoffs.

Crazy we still have a chance of making it into pot 2 and goes to show how baffling it is we let two international windows go by without getting our permanent coach in. The NL is incredibly important for us to get our ranking sorted to gives us the best chance of going to USA 2026.

Of course, the Euros Is likely going to drastically change what we need from the next few months rankings wise.

Well at least you are showing your true colours now.

We've always had both.

I've not seen us play a more effective away game than we did against Austria a few years back and that was under MON.

The bar is set low for HH initially, just not losing his first two qualifiers will exceed the last two campaigns but hopefully we get a group draw that could facilitate a bit more ambition than that.

I had it in my head the WC was expanding.

Stop trying desperately to paint me as a Kenny fan.

I was more than happy with the football played under O'Neill and wouldn't say it's at all the same as the "Allerdyce type" manager some people were calling for here.

I'm happy enough with his appointment in general. Has had some excellent success, but it hasn't all been plain sailing, about the best we could hope for, and if he does anything like what happened with Iceland, we'll all be happy enough.

Sure things with Kenny didn't work, but I think him shifting a lot of our focus to underage will be important for the future, and Heimir seeming like someone who will do the same in terms of looking at the underage structures, that can't hurt, hopefully he'll take an interest in things domestically too. I still think all of that stuff is more critical to our long term future success than anything else.

The being open to Greenwood playing for Jamacia stuff is something that bothers me, I would like him to clarify the situation early so it can be left alone and we can move on with our lives and enjoy something for once.

In the week we have the Women's Soccer Abuse revelations, it's certainly something we could have done without.

And Qatar is a peninsula, in fairness to him

I would say we stopped being competitive since late MON. Maybe we didn't lose much under McCarthy II but we were not winning either or going anywhere.

But ya I agree that we need to be harder to play against and never was it more evident than seeing the amount of long range goals we conceded.

All I really want is to qualify and have the kind of feel good occasions that Iceland or Wales recently had. Style of play doesn't matter to me as long as we achieve that. I just have my own ideas about which style will best achieve it.

Contract runs until the end of the WC and supposedly for €650K a year according to Aidan Fitzmaurice.

are you ecsatic about this appointment ?

Im certainly not

The Greenwood thing likely predates Halgrimsson in that it was their FA that began an ultra aggresive policy of trying to entice as many English with Jamacian heritage as possible to try and improve the team. At one point they called up 12 English players to a squad, and tried to call Ivan Toney. If his bosses wanted Greenwood he couldn't refuse, same as De Zerbi at Marseille.

While I’d never argue for any team to lose on purpose, I can see the logic in it.

We are extremely unlikely to qualify for the WC. 16 spots for Europe and there are certainly 16 better teams than us. Even if we did well enough to get a decent seeding we’re likely facing teams levels above us even in a playoff.

Should we be relegated to group C then we’d be in with a good chance of being competitive there ahead of Euro qualifying which would give us a great chance of a playoff regardless - without that path Georgia wouldn’t have made it to their first Euros. Couple that with the potential automatic spots for non qualifying hosts and we’d have a few avenues there.

It’s not ideal but group C wouldn’t be an absolute disaster either.

It's funny how many Irish fans can't grasp the level we were shopping in.

I think that will be the best possible explanation, however I do think there is always the option to descent, especially when you're a rich football man, Di Zerbi has no excuse, but even Hallgrimsson, had already made his cash in Qatar by this point, and had the Iceland experience on his CV, he has plenty of power to stand up for whatever he believes in and especially make his case in private whatever about publicly.

Turns out he is actually from an island off the coast of Iceland 🤣

And it looks like he might be names after said island.

Yeah… exactly, Canham said "earlier this year", while the person paraphrasing for RTE took that and wrote 'start' instead. Unfortunately no shortage of miscommunications by hurried journos.

And yeah, of course it's guesswork, but given that they thought they were close to signing someone around March/April, and their most closely linked person at the time (Poyet) was then reported to have rejected a contract offer from us, it's a reasonable enough likelihood that Hallgrimsson became a more firm target around then for after the Copa.

I'm pretty grand with all that, would've been nice if they could've gotten one of the earlier targets sooner, but we know it's not the most attractive job in the world, so I'm happy enough they kept aiming as high as they could rather than just giving it to O'Shea, as more than a few here said would definitely happen.

Who were the better candidates that showed an interest ?

Given how sure you were that they were going to give it to a completely inexperienced O'Shea, I'm not sure why you're so down on this, as it's a demonstrable step up from what you expected. I know you wanted Lennon, but for whatever reason, they clearly very much did not. Maybe it was financial as you say, though if Lennon was asking for more than what's been reported he was never an option anyway.

Feels like the argument over what he'll do outside the senior team is a bit moot for now, given how early we are in the process and how little we've heard. No harm to have someone on board who worked for so many years within a clearly far superior Icelandic setup though, getting much more from much less. Ultimately it's his senior international experience that's most important though.

If I recall correctly, the only two who publicly mentioned contact with the FAI were Lennon and Roy Keane. This guy has more relevant management experience than those two combined.

“ I’m not an expert in this. I just look at the person. I think what he has gone through in the year and a half since it happened is worse than I can imagine, being in the press and on social media. I can only imagine what he has been going through. The case went through stages and the case was dropped, so it’s not up to me or anyone else to judge him on that. It was no less a person than Jesus Christ who said, those who are without sin should throw the first stone. Whatever happened, everybody at least deserves a second chance. And he knows that all eyes are on him. So it’s a big pressure and I am happy for the player that he is coming back because it is probably a trauma. It’s difficult to come (back) from, so I give him my support at least. He must have a strong mentality to start to play again and start to play so well.”

To me, that is a very poorly worded way of handling it, this is a previous quote whilst at Jamaica. Given there has also been abuse in Iceland, he really should do his homework and know so so much better. And again we now have our own scandal in Ireland.

At the very least I can tell you that my 28 yr old football playing sister messaged me, and it was the very first thing she brought up about him. Lads on internet forums might not realize it but his kind of talk has greater repercussions.