[Albion] Internationals

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Gun shot

Gun shot

Ready to be fired
Oct 3, 2020
147
In a holster
Questions said:
Boothroyd out
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And after Portugal did us a huge favour by thrashing Switzerland when they only needed a point to top the group tonight.

Absolutely pathetic. I saw the excuses already this morning from Boothroyd. The guy makes McClaren look competent. FA, please bin him off and replace with someone used to international football. There's enough talented youngsters to have got out of a mediocre group we were in.

Dear oh dear. :facepalm:
 




drew

drew

Drew
NSC Patron
Oct 3, 2006
23,641
Burgess Hill
Gun shot said:
And after Portugal did us a huge favour by thrashing Switzerland when they only needed a point to top the group tonight.

Absolutely pathetic. I saw the excuses already this morning from Boothroyd. The guy makes McClaren look competent. FA, please bin him off and replace with someone used to international football. There's enough talented youngsters to have got out of a mediocre group we were in.

Dear oh dear. :facepalm:
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Could have done with Foden and Bellingham!
 
















ATFC Seagull

ATFC Seagull

Aberystwyth Town FC
Jul 27, 2004
5,358
(North) Portslade
Jolly Red Giant said:
1. Kenny is a few months shy of 50 - he has been a manager for almost 25 years. The guy has been sacked from half the teams he managed. His 'reputation' is manufactured, based on his success at Dundalk - a success based on the quality of players that were at the club when he arrived. Furthermore, you need experience at international manager level - an ability to get the best out of the players at your disposal because you cannot go out and spend £50-£100million on a striker. Kenny has never shown that he is capable of producing when he has had limited resources at his disposal. By the way - the best Irish manager at the moment is Brendan Rodgers - and Michael O'Neill is doing a good job as well - Rodgers is younger than Kenny and O'Neill a year older.

2. You said they were Championship players - they are not - most play in the PL. Now you retort with the fact that they are going to get relegated. The reality is that John Egan will be back in the PL next season unless he is convinced that Sheff U will bounce straight back - and he actually wants to stay there. I also think Callum Robinson is underrated and is PL standard. As for Clark and Hendrick - Hendrick never really produced for Ireland and is clearly in decline - Clark however has played most of his career in the PL and will continue to be a useful back-up to the defenders who will be on the pitch for Ireland. Coleman has another 3/4 years at Everton and will be vital going forward and Doherty will prove how good he is when Mourinho gets sacked. You also failed to mention another PL player at WBA - Darragh O'Shea - who was Ireland's best player by a stretch over the recent three games.

3. There is a lot of potential at underage level for Ireland. We have no idea how much of that potential will come to fruition. In my view it is the most exciting crop of young players since Ireland won the underage European Championships. You mention Bazunu and Kelleher (and Ireland is set at GK for the next 20 years) - and then Connolly. I don't want to go back over old territory when people on here were raving about Connolly, but Connolly is not the pick of the remaining bunch of young players. The aforementioned Darragh O'Shea looks like he will be a top PL player - Nathan Collins has had several PL clubs looking at him. Molumby, who I would argue made a mistake going to Preston, is a better prospect than Connolly and will become a good PL player. Will Ferry and Will Smallbone at Southampton as exciting players - Conor Noss at Monchengladbach - Cullen could really kick-on in Belgium - Adam Idah at Norwich and Parrott - and then there are also a host of youngsters a couple of years below them - like Evan Ferguson. Not all of these players will come through - but we don't need them to - a couple here and there and all of a sudden you have a really good team. Finally you have Jason Knight - he was excellent in the first half against Luxembourg, but faded in the second half, like the rest of the team. When he came on as sub last night he singularly caused the team to up the tempo and threaten Qatar. Rooney isn't the only one raving about Knight - he produces week-in week-out for Derby and in January Burnley, Palace and West Ham all tried to sign him. West Ham regard him as a potential replacement for Rice. Again - he may never fulfill his potential - but the odds are very much in his favour.

4. The Irish team is going through a major transition. O'Neill should have been sacked two years before he was - and the FAI should have tried to hire Hughton. That didn't happen - McCarthy was a lame duck with Kenny waiting in the wings. If they FAI really wanted to change the style of play and wanted an Irish manager then they should have gone for a tried and tested manager who has a solid reputation at international level - Brian Kerr - there is someone who knows what he is doing and knows how to get the best from the players at his disposal. But the FAI, as usual, have their collective heads up their rear-ends.

The problem with Kenny is that he doesn't know what he is doing - he was outcoached by both Luc Holtz on Saturday and again by Felix Sanchez last night. His team is a mess and it is only because of the effort of the players that they weren't more seriously embarrassed. Last night Kenny compared his 11 game winless start (5D 6L - 4GF 12 GA) - to Michael O'Neill - yet O'Neill clearly had a plan in place and knew what he was doing (with a worse squad of players than Kenny has available) - furthermore, O'Neill was playing against teams that were much superior to what Kenny has had to face (Holland, Russia, Portugal). As an aside - both Alan Kelly and Damien Duff (who is developing a reputation as a coach) both packed their bags and left the Irish set-up to protect their reputation. However long Kenny is left as manager will be wasted time and potentially wasteful of the players coming into the squad and whoever takes over will have a big mess to clean up.
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I don't want to start an argument here as I don't think we're miles apart on most things.

Can't really counter what you're saying about Kenny's managerial record before Dundalk. What I would say is that most managers have very mixed CV's, I think most people would agree that you focus on where they're at more recently than trawling through their history. I'd watched his club side, I'd read lots of people compare his knowledge of Irish football to Brian Kerr (who it seems we both agree on), I was sold on him. I didn't read a lot of people voicing concerns like yours at the time (fair play if you did). Also RE: O'Neill and Rodgers, I was clearly talking about actual serious prospects for taking the job at this stage.

In terms of the current players and the Prem/Championship debate: without looking back through pages of this thread I don't know what my exact wording was. But what I certainly meant was that going forward, we are looking at Championship players in terms of their general level AS WELL AS where they'd play the majority of their football. I stand by this - those players will be playing at that level next year, and at the moment they are mostly Championship quality players in bottom-half PL sides. Apologies for forgetting O'Shea (and you're right he definitely was the best player this week), but I'd be willing to bet money that all of those players (O'Shea and Egan included) will not be playing Premier League football next year. And for the most part they won't be standouts in the Championship either (the ones you pointed out, O'Shea and Egan, are the ones I'd predict otherwise). Totally disagree on Robinson in particular, I really like him as a player but I do not think he is top level standard.

Also agree with that list of promising players, but I wouldn't overstate it. As you rightly say there's a long way to go for a lot of them, and we need some of them to really come through and be top-level players. I was very excited by Idah but thought he was very poor when given a run out (I know he's young, poor side etc etc).

Hard to argue on where Kenny has them tactically at the moment.
 






Deportivo Seagull

Deportivo Seagull

I should coco
Jul 22, 2003
5,478
Mid Sussex
Even though there is no crowd we still get the ****ing brass band[emoji2959]


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 








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