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

We need to accept that we are at a lower level than the likes of Greece, and have been for a long time.

We are a 4th seed team now, plain and simple. For some reason, some pundits or those in the media think that we are favourites entering those type of games. We shouldn't be.

The very classy England supporters seemed to be in the bar in the Grand Canal Hotel

Say it'll be a war warzone later. The ones in the Stadium didn't seem to bad. Those **** idiots running on the pitch though

bookmakers favourites.

Who? Us or Greece?

So awful performance aside, any update on Coleman? Was nasty but hopefully not too serious

Us!

An accusation of trolling because I have an opinion that you show some manners. Your the one trolling.

'you are just being completely obtuse at this stage and Bordering on low level Trolling.'

What did I misunderstand about that comment?

Kennyball was possession for possession sake until we passed the ball straight to the opposition in a dangerous area followed by desperately scrambling about.

We were definitely better today.

I thought Brady did alright.

Coleman was shredded, but he was exposed by a lack of Doherty covering.

Yeah true.

Actually the Racing Post was asking us to plump on a draw for the England game ?

I’d say it’ll be more than likely a draw

Lads wtf is with €10 programmes ?

Did HH kiss it or something

10 **** euro absolute rip

Everytime I see any of them on the team sheet it's bloody depressing. We seem to have a problem with retiring players. We need to look to the future. Management and players too pally with each other. HH should take control and clear the decks. That's his job - not leave it to JOS.

Brady and Doherty up there with McClean and Hendrick (took ages to get rid of them despite the fact they hadn't done anything for years for the team).

For some reason Irish management going back years and years have thought "past it" players should be given priority until they are practically falling over like they are owed something. We end up with them staying way past their usefulness to the detriment of developing younger talent in their positions.

The key word there is "play". Kelleher is our best player right now, despite a few cup games he's not going to get regular game time.

Some of the subs today pretty much summed up our squad. It was Ferguson's first game in 5 months (injury allowing he has a big task to get back in that Brighton Frontline) and O'Brien doesn't seem to be able to get a kick of the ball at Everton. None of our players are going to develop/progress without game time.

Playing for a Greek side in European competitions is unquestionably more beneficial than sitting on the bench for a club of a "higher level".

Banter, as you call it, it's perfectly fine.

But booing a national anthem if pretty low in my opinion. I know it's a horrible anthem, I know we've got history, none of us are fools. But I think ignoring an anthem is much better than booing it. In fact, I'd say that's very "English" of our fans for booing their anthem.

As for the match, they barely broke a sweat. We where terrible in the first half, arguably the worst half of football from us in recent memory. Second half was better, but mainly because the English weren't over exerting themselves.

And as for the goal scorers. I've no ill feeling towards either of them. Grealish only played youth football for us. Rice on the other hand wasn't given a competitive cap by O'Neill and was bullied by Roy Keane, so who can blame him for jumping ship.

I mentioned this half as a joke a couple of weeks ago, but I do feel like HH has been leaning heavily on the coaching staff because he knew it was going to be a pretty tough start. Wanted to have some ready made excuses in, and I wouldn't blame him for that. My personal expectations were very low and think 2-0 flattered us. The gulf is massive but the 5 at the back has to die. I'm going to try and not judge him until the Nations League is over at the earliest. The bar is set good and low, lets see if and where improvements are.

I know a lot of you have very strong opinions about Kenny here, but one of my big takeaways from the 2 matches against Greece was how much better they felt man for man, It's a good experiment to get to play someone again so soon to compare and see if there's actually anything a different approach will bring, lord I think we need a different shape or we will just surrender midfield again thou.

We also struggled v Finland under the early Kenny reign, although I think that was probably too long ago to really make a decent comparison.


The team has a real lack of maturity and steel, something that will probably only come with time, and that's my best guess as to why we keep persisting with some of the older guys, no matter how much they are struggling physically. It's probably not the route I'd take, but maybe the alternative is worse.

We have a lot of very promising players with plenty international experience that I think we all hoped would be further along than they once looked like they would be, I still think there's plenty of improvement there in individual players, so I feel cautiously optimistic about the medium term squad situation, but it could all go to hell easily enough too. 

The main thing I notice between most teams and ireland - we have to work really hard to retrieve the ball and tire out as a result whereas the opposition just wait patiently for a long ball or poor touch and take possession again. We must be the easiest team in Europe to play against, we can't hold possession for any length of time without the urge to hit one of those superstar cross field passes straight back to the opponents defenders. I think having no midfield is a big part of that...nobody to knit a few passes together and calm things down

I still don't get the Rice nonsense. He seemed the proudest one belting out God Save the King. I doubt he could have done that in the green. Even if he was tied to Ireland wheres the guarantee he'd actually play for us? He could just do a Stephen Ireland or just retire from international football anyway.