DELANEY OUT

[dalliance]

DELANEY OUT

My delight at probably not having Ireland cause my eyes to bleed in another major intentional tournament is tempered by the anticipation of you rabbiting on at length about how they could beat all the teams that did qualify if only Trap wasn't straitjacketing your Zinc Generation of youngsters.

[Borracho]

DELANEY OUT

I'm not disputing the style of play needs to change drastically and the midfield needs to be reinforced. A five-year-old could see that things have to be altered radically by whoever the new manager is. I'm saying that blaming Robbie Keane for everything that's wrong with the team is ludicrous. It also gets a lot of other players off the hook.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

What is this "nearly 20 games" stuff? The longest he's ever gone without scoring for Ireland is eight games, when he was aged 20 and 21. If you dislike him, then good luck to you, but there's no need to exaggerate.

He managed one goal from open play in 15 internationals, over the 2011-12 and 2012-13 season. That one goal was a header from 3 yards against a nine man estonia when we were already 3-0 up. We could have played Matt le tissier up front for those two seasons and he would have been every bit as effective.

[Calvert]

DELANEY OUT

Zinc Generation

Heh.

I'd be happy with zinc.
Our lot have had a few decades of lead.

[Borracho]

DELANEY OUT

I can't be arsed looking up the stats again at this time of night, but if you're now hurriedly changing the parameters to "in open play", that probably means Keane scored three or four in total in the spell you refer to. Which is not quite the same thing as "essentially goes nearly 20 games without scoring".

I can't wait for the day when we have nobody in the team at all who can put the ball in the net with frequency at international level. Then we'll be sorted.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

It's always the manager or some other excuse; you can't accept you have the same group of broadly mediocre players that the rest of the world sees.

As I said, it doesn't actually matter what the team is like, or what the players are like, you still just trot out the same old they speak english, they have hooves shite. It doesn't matter if they knock holland out of the world cup, and dominate possession to an almost absurd degree against germany and spain, without our best player, You still trotted out the same they can barely fucking put one foot in front of the other shit.

It's almost like your preconceptions, which must have been anachronistic even when you were young, render you incapable of understanding what is happening in front of you.

You seem to be essentially missing the point that it is giovanni trapatoni who insists on playing 4-4-2 long ball football, and steadfastly refusing to pick our best players and using a system of play that might suit the players that we have.

If you don't play his way he drops you. He's the one picking glen whelan all the time. He's the one who thinks that paul Green is an international footballer. He's the one who picks Connor Sammon ahead of wes houlihan.

Trappatoni is a fraud and should stop stealing our money and wasting our time. He's a rich old fraud, and can't take it with him, so he just fuck off back to his office above a garage outside milan where he sits around with his old buddies and leave us to pick up the pieces. He's 'earned' over €12 million from us, so why can't he just fuck off.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

I can't be arsed looking up the stats again at this time of night, but if you're now hurriedly changing the parameters to "in open play", that probably means Keane scored three or four in total in the spell you refer to. Which is not quite the same thing as "essentially goes nearly 20 games without scoring".

It means he scored a couple of penalties. Which is something that matt le Tissier could have done, and he has a BMI of nearly 40.

once again, he scored one goal from open play in two fucking seasons, including a tournament, and all the pre-tournament friendlies.

[Borracho]

DELANEY OUT

Yes, at a time when he was 31 and visibly past it. Of course, he is now still past it. But let's face it, nobody else in this increasingly rotten team is going to score too many goals.

The fact that you're having to pick out and isolate the very worst spell of his international career to make your point speaks for itself. You could do that with any striker to try to make them look bad.

I've already mentioned Shearer with England. Roberto Mancini got one goal for Italy in 20-odd internationals but was a great player in general. Gabriel Batistuta was a bit of a disaster for Argentina near the end. Raul went on a run for Spain where he scored three times in two years, one of them against San Marino.

Taking the crappiest stretch of someone's international career and holding it up to the light doesn't really tell us anything about that player at all.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

Yes, at a time when he was 31 and visibly past it. Of course, he is now still past it. But let's face it, nobody else in this increasingly rotten team is going to score too many goals.

you're still not taking into account that this may largely be a result of him being the first fucking name on the teamsheet. Maybe some of these players might be more likely to score if we're not playing long ball 4-4-2 focused on Robbie Keane geting on the end of a couple of scraps.

The fact that you're having to pick out and isolate the very worst spell of his international career to make your point speaks for itself. You could do that with any striker to try to make them look bad.

I'm talking about last season and the season before. You know, the two most recent bloody seasons.

Taking the crappiest stretch of someone's international career and holding it up to the light doesn't really tell us anything about that player at all.

Even when keane was at his best, he was an unreliable scorer, and not very good in general play, but he was still vastly better than he has been over the last couple of years.

He could lose a fucking leg and he would still be the first player on traps team sheet if he was prepared to go on the pitch with a crutch.

[Diable Rouge]

DELANEY OUT

AB2 wrote: I saw a shot of Chris Hughton in the crowd tonight (he appeared to be taking a photo of the pitch, due to an optical illusion). If he had been entertaining any thoughts of ever taking this job in the near future, they will have been forcibly dispelled from his brain long before the end.

Kevchenko won't be happy to hear it, but he surely has to be offered the job come November, he'd start Hoolahan and Brady at any rate.

[anton pulisov]

DELANEY OUT

dalliance wrote:

To be honest, You were saying this sort of shit back when we were doing things like dominating possession in world cup games against spain. Ireland have plenty of player capable of playing decent football. They just have an absolute fucking dinosaur of a manager who is stealing our money and depressing our players.

It's always the manager or some other excuse; you can't accept you have the same group of broadly mediocre players that the rest of the world sees.

I think Glenn Whelan is the most mediocre that has ever played in midfield for Ireland. And, when fit, he has started every match for 5 fucking years.

We can blame the manager for that. We could have had a midfield triangle of Gibson, McCarthy and Hoolahan last night. No, they're not world beaters, but they'd be better than the midfield setup we have at the moment.

Precisely because we don't have fantastic players is why we need a manager who can get the most out of the team.

Ireland may well be average, but there are plenty of average teams who qualify for tournaments and make it into the knockout stages. They don't get tonked 6-1 hat home because the manager decides to pick a centre back who plays his football in Canada.

[anton pulisov]

DELANEY OUT

AB2 wrote: I can't wait for the day when we have nobody in the team at all who can put the ball in the net with frequency at international level. Then we'll be sorted.

You build a football team around getting it to play the ball and creating chances. This Ireland team does not create chances. This is the major problem. I wouldn't worry about who the striker is, because as long as the team is not playing football, it doesn't really matter.

AB2 wrote: Roberto Mancini got one goal for Italy in 20-odd internationals but was a great player in general.

Exactly. You are making my argument for me. Robbie Keane is not a great player in general.

You also mentioned Venables sticking with Shearer. Shearer was good in the air, could hold up the ball, link up with other strikers, put in a shift in midfield, etc. That's why Venables stuck with Shearer. Because he offered something to the team. He didn't sit around scratching his arse, waiting for the ball to come to him.

edit: France won the World Cup in 1998 without a goal scoring striker. Spain won the World Cup in 2010 without a goal scoring striker. Italy got to the World Cup final in 1994 without fielding any goal machine strikers. This "we need a striker hanging around the box who scores a lot of goals" thing is Sunday league level thinking. You need a productive team forward who contributes to the team. Stapleton's goals to game ratio for Ireland was 0.29. Robbie Keane's is 0.47. Yet I know who I'd pick if they were both the same age, available and fully fit.

[Duncan Gardner]

DELANEY OUT

Calvert wrote:

Zinc Generation

Heh.

I'd be happy with zinc.
Our lot have had a few decades of lead

A flat back four, yesterday:



Glam outtakes earworm:

[dalliance]

DELANEY OUT

I think Glenn Whelan is the most mediocre that has ever played in midfield for Ireland. And, when fit, he has started every match for 5 fucking years.

We can blame the manager for that. We could have had a midfield triangle of Gibson, McCarthy and Hoolahan last night. No, they're not world beaters, but they'd be better than the midfield setup we have at the moment.

It's not as easy as saying if we put these three players in a midfield triangle then we will suddenly transform into a different side that plays different football.

This is the problem that successive England managers have found: British players are not technically and tactically flexible like that.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

For fuck's sake dalliance, the only person remotely connected with Irish football who thinks that we should be playing 4-4-2 and punting the ball in the air is giovanni trappatoni. It has nothing to do with the players, and everything to do with the manager. He's like a semi senile tony pullis.

if our players were only able to produce the shit that trap has them playing, they would never have made it as professional footballers in the 21st century. You have to get over this "They speak english, they get their boots fitted in a forge" preoccupation of yours.

And just lay off the whole "4-4-2 long ball is all these players can play because they are tactically and technically inflexible" schtick. They all play a different formation with their clubs every week.

[Borracho]

DELANEY OUT

Bryaniek wrote:

I can't wait for the day when we have nobody in the team at all who can put the ball in the net with frequency at international level. Then we'll be sorted.

You build a football team around getting it to play the ball and creating chances. This Ireland team does not create chances. This is the major problem. I wouldn't worry about who the striker is, because as long as the team is not playing football, it doesn't really matter.

AB2 wrote: Roberto Mancini got one goal for Italy in 20-odd internationals but was a great player in general.

Exactly. You are making my argument for me. Robbie Keane is not a great player in general.

You also mentioned Venables sticking with Shearer. Shearer was good in the air, could hold up the ball, link up with other strikers, put in a shift in midfield, etc. That's why Venables stuck with Shearer. Because he offered something to the team. He didn't sit around scratching his arse, waiting for the ball to come to him.

edit: France won the World Cup in 1998 without a goal scoring striker. Spain won the World Cup in 2010 without a goal scoring striker. Italy got to the World Cup final in 1994 without fielding any goal machine strikers. This "we need a striker hanging around the box who scores a lot of goals" thing is Sunday league level thinking. You need a productive team forward who contributes to the team. Stapleton's goals to game ratio for Ireland was 0.29. Robbie Keane's is 0.47. Yet I know who I'd pick if they were both the same age, available and fully fit.

Frank Stapleton generally wasn't that good for Ireland. In the Charlton era (which overlapped with the final three years of his international career) that wasn't his fault, because all he was doing was running around like a blue arsed fly under the direct orders of the manager. But he wasn't great in the Eoin Hand era either, frequently missing easy chances and not getting involved enough in the play. I'm old enough to remember it. You have a rose-tinted vision of him in your head because he's not Robbie Keane or Niall Quinn.

[anton pulisov]

DELANEY OUT

You'd be surprised at the number of videos I've looked at. He was very good in the 82 qualifiers.

Stapleton put in a lot of graft.

[Duncan Gardner]

DELANEY OUT

Be careful who you insult, Berba. Pulis is the sort of guy I can imagine strutting out of some rough dockside pub in Newport or Burslem before strangling a Rottweiler with his bare hands. While wearing a baseball cap backwards.

Early betting to succeed Trappaderci:

Mart O'Neill 4/6
Mike O'Neill 4/1
Warnock O'Neil 8/1
Shaquille O'Neal 100-1
Terence O'Neill 1,690-1

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

I think pullis would be flattered by the suggestion that he was like a more clued in trappatoni.

[Borracho]

DELANEY OUT

I'd be looking for more from an international striker than just graft, to be honest.

Stapleton had his moments in an Ireland shirt, but that was all they were, moments. Even on one of his most famous afternoons, at home to Spain in late 1982, he was a lost soul for two-thirds of the game until Kevin O'Callaghan put two great crosses on his head from the right wing.

He could be great sometimes, but not particularly often.

[Borracho]

DELANEY OUT

Pulis for Ireland, jesus christ. Watch those ten-year tickets for the Aviva fly off the shelves.

It's probably going to be someone like Martin O'Neill. And given that he seems to have lost interest in football generally, it would just be a wild punt in the dark.

I remain hopeful that if we lose the Vienna and Berlin games badly, Delaney's position will come under serious threat. It's a sad thing to be hoping for but there you go.

Wonder how many they'll get in for the Kazakhstan game. The aforementioned Eoin Hand oversaw his final match (1-4 v Denmark, 1985) in front of a crowd of about 10,500.

I can't recall there being a four-figure attendance at Lansdowne for an Ireland match in the modern era, but there's a first time for everything.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

DELANEY OUT

There must be enough verifiable stories about delaney's behaviour by now to force him out of the job. It's only a matter of time before he turns up for a press conference soaked in his own piss.

[dalliance]

DELANEY OUT

And just lay off the whole "4-4-2 long ball is all these players can play because they are tactically and technically inflexible" schtick. They all play a different formation with their clubs every week.

As do England's players although it doesn't mean they can do it when they don't have foreigners to perform some of the key roles.

When i see Ireland basic stuff like ball control and a semi-decent touch is hard enough work for some of their players. That's really not Trap's fault.

[anton pulisov]

DELANEY OUT

It is his fault when he puts Hoolahan on the bench, who can do all those things. As you say, many of our players have a poor touch. So why bench the player with best ball control and passing skills?

What the FAI need is a manager who they can hire on the cheap without having to buy out his contract. Luckily McCarthy is safely under contract at Ipswich. Then I read this. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[Duncan Gardner]

DELANEY OUT

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: There must be enough verifiable stories about delaney's behaviour by now to force him out of the job. It's only a matter of time before he turns up for a press conference soaked in his own piss

JD gets a helping hand to his taxi outside a Cricklewood pub.

Possibly the only known occasion of a FA chief getting more blocked than the OTFer carrying him...