The Football Thread

[Paul keohane]

Luxembourg are all professionals,this was never going to be the walk in the park some expected.This is the weakest and most depleted Irish squad i can remember,this goes way beyond managers.This is the result of decades of neglect by the FAI,theres a long hard road ahead for Irish Football.To many people getting caught up in results and Kenny etc,its way bigger than that.

[astfgyl]

Cyprus

Fuck there was that as well

[astfgyl]

Luxembourg are all professionals,this was never going to be the walk in the park some expected.This is the weakest and most depleted Irish squad i can remember,this goes way beyond managers.This is the result of decades of neglect by the FAI,theres a long hard road ahead for Irish Football.To many people getting caught up in results and Kenny etc,its way bigger than that.

I get that and I don't disagree with you either. It isn't as simple as blaming Kenny or the players for being what they are

[Doctor Crippen]

Luxembourg are all professionals,this was never going to be the walk in the park some expected.This is the weakest and most depleted Irish squad i can remember,this goes way beyond managers.This is the result of decades of neglect by the FAI,theres a long hard road ahead for Irish Football.To many people getting caught up in results and Kenny etc,its way bigger than that.

Spot on in fairness 

[Mower Liberation Front]

Luxembourg are all professionals,this was never going to be the walk in the park some expected.This is the weakest and most depleted Irish squad i can remember,this goes way beyond managers.This is the result of decades of neglect by the FAI,theres a long hard road ahead for Irish Football.To many people getting caught up in results and Kenny etc,its way bigger than that.

If only the Luxembourg FA CEO had spent the organisation's money on James Bond themed birthday parties instead of player development.

[Pedrito]

This delusion is incredible. Ah Cyprus, San Marino blah blah. Luxembourg haven't won an away game in qualifiers in 13 years. We have a manager who hasn't won in 10 games trying to implement a brand of football that only works when you have top quality professionals playing for you who are used to doing it week in week out. Everybody thinks they can be Barcelona now..nonsense. They have a culture of that way of playing that was implemented all through the levels going back to Johann Cryuff. We don't, and expecting it to suddenly begin to work when players are already in their 20's is ridiculous. There are many ways to play the game and winning breeds confidence, not how many passes you can put together.

[Emphyrio]

This delusion is incredible. Ah Cyprus, San Marino blah blah. Luxembourg haven't won an away game in qualifiers in 13 years. We have a manager who hasn't won in 10 games trying to implement a brand of football that only works when you have top quality professionals playing for you who are used to doing it week in week out. Everybody thinks they can be Barcelona now..nonsense. They have a culture of that way of playing that was implemented all through the levels going back to Johann Cryuff. We don't, and expecting it to suddenly begin to work when players are already in their 20's is ridiculous. There are many ways to play the game and winning breeds confidence, not how many passes you can put together.

While all that is fair, the problem is the structures that have been neglected for all of Delaney's reign and before. There's more cohesion between the levels now I think. The underage setups seem to be doing well. I think it'd be silly for the youth teams to be playing modern football and our first team to be playing Trap/O'Neill muck. It'd defeat the purpose of youth squad development if they then have to learn caveman football when they get to senior squad.

There's two outlooks: 1) You want to start getting positive results immediately, even if it means reverting to type or 2) you're willing allow time to let the philosophy of this more possession based game take hold.

I'd be in the second camp. I don't want the likes of Pulis or Allerdyce etc. coming in and playing muck again anyway.

[astfgyl]

It's sort of evident from the last 2 games that we don't have the players, besides everything else. It will be a long long time before we see an Irish team reach a tournament again, regardless of whether they kick and rush their way to defeat or pass their way to defeat.

[Pedrito]

I don't think for a minute you have to resort to Pulis or the likes. There's an effective middle ground to be found. We should play to our traditional strengths. It's clear the players don't have the basic skills that Portuguese, Spanish or French players have. You just have to walk around any estate in Ireland these days and there's a fraction of kids playing football than there were when we were kids. The basics are not there and that translates into the adult game. Tiki taka works when kids are playing football constantly in the street and then bringing that to their clubs at the weekend where a philosophy/style of football is adhered to across the board. You look at a lad like Diogo Jota..we have nobody comes even close to him.

Luxembourg have won 5 games in World cup history. We're their biggest ever scalp.

[Emphyrio]

There's no quick fix and we may as well forget about traditional strengths. We've always had a good defence, with many players at a high level. We don't even have that anymore so we need to figure out if we have any other strengths. It could be argued that currently we don't. We played well vs Serbia, but players got tired. That bled into last night. This is a consequence of our squad being decimated.

The only way we'd be likely to win these days is hoofball but that's not a fix. I'd like Kenny to stick to his guns. I'd be hopeful, if not entirely confident, that when players return and get used to the system, things would look better. We should have a strategy to play on the front foot and another one to play to our "traditional strengths" against teams who are clearly better.

[Emphyrio]

The long and the short of it, Pedro, is that I can't argue with any of your points. I'm just trying to keep a more optimistic spin on it, even if it does take a while to get there.

[astfgyl]

Yeah, it's no harm being able to pass the ball but some flexibility in our approach would be no harm either. It's not even the fact that Luxembourg beat us for me. It was the manner of the defeat because they were far better than we were and could have won it by a couple. In the normal run of things we still could have been beaten by them while missing a host of chances or cracking the crossbar a few times or their keeper having the game of his life etc but it wasn't like that at all. Our best player was the goalie... in a defeat to Luxembourg.

[Emphyrio]

Aye, there were simply no positives to take from that game. As I said earlier, muck.

[Pedrito]

Optimism is fine as long as it's not delusion and it's clear that people have made up their mind about giving Kenny a chance when most of the evidence is to the contrary. Whatever you might think about Martin O'Neill, the man had played and managed at the highest level and yet everything he did was held under a microscope and shredded to pieces. The same rule is not applied to Kenny who is nowhere near as successful as O'Neill was.

In a team that dosn't have quality full backs you cannot expect to play 3-5-2 and get away with it. If we think we are going to play Portugal using 3-5-2 we are going to be murdered..literally dismembered. John Giles always says it and he's 100% right..you have to earn the right to play that way. You don't just start tiky takying and hey presto it all falls into place. Maybe they can use this campaign to try and put some order on what they're trying to do, but starting with a proper system, get the defence right before trying to become Liverpool might allow us to grab a 1-0 here or there.

[Emphyrio]

Yup, we're not ready for 3-5-2. I'd fully agree there. What I would disagree with you on is O'Neill. His constant reference to Clough and that method of management..... Time has moved on. That was painful stuff.