Nos89 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 27, 2018 1:56 pm
Surprised Martin o'neill stayed on. Thought the plan was to move roy keane into the role. However, I bet Mick McCarthy is pissing himself at having to go in and clear up the mess left by Roy Keane, especially after Keane compromised his position back in 2002.
The sad thing about the whole situation is where are the decent Irish players? Since the 1970's they've always had a core of top quality players, now, they are left with championship players.
The criticism wasn't levelled at the management team but more to do with the lack of quality players. I also heard that the modern players simple don't respond to O'Neills and Keane's management style. Didn't O'neil declare in a press conference there will not be a god cop/ bad cop, just two bad cops? They've proper milked the money out of the FAI too.
I'm sure Mick Mccarthy will steady the ship, and bring back the players that didn't want to play for O'Neill.
For me that doesnt tell the full story - yes the standard of players in the squad is not great, but isnt that the case in countries all over the world ? With the exception of the one-eyed fans, most england fans admitted that the team that got to the world cup semi final a few months ago, is one of the poorest england teams for decades. Of course that is an indictment on the quality of english players, but more importantly it is an indictment of the other countries as well. Italian and dutch football has dropped so much that neither even qualified for last summers tournament. I dont know if I have ever seen as poor an argentinian team as this one, and it is obvious to everyone that spain are on a decline too. Basically the point I was making here is that football standard worldwide is poor, but when you have a country like brazil that has a population of almost 210m, then it is far easier to get 20 very good players, than it is in smaller countries like ours
The thing that FINALLY got o'neill out was nothing to do with the quality of players, but everything to do with the quality of the play. I keep harping back to a night just over a year ago when luxembourg went to paris to take on (the eventual winners) france - that night the visiting team got the ball down, passed it about and generally kept possession and had a go at the french and got a deserved 0-0 draw (had some great chances to win it). Just a week previously our Irish team travelled to play the might of georgia (
) and play negative and route one football and came away with a 1-1 draw. The contrast between the two teams (luxembourg and Ireland) and their tactics could not be more opposite and it summed up o'neills mindset - playing 8 defensive minded players every fcuking game was always going to wear down the patience of the fans, and so it proved. If we dont win many games under McCarthy I will be ok with it, as long as I see him trying to develop a team that tries to play football and tries to win games - if he does that and fails, then we can come back to discuss the lack of quality available to him
