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[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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Seriously, are you on a wind up. Stop with the english speakers have hooves and need foreigners schtick. the problems of the English national team (too many little hitlers, not enough indians) are not the problems of the Irish national team, and never have been.

if you send out any group of players in a formation that makes them look bad, with tactics that make them look bad, and with instructions to keep getting rid of the ball, and keep saying in public that they are shit, then they are going to wind up playing badly, and doing fucking stupid things with the ball, and play with the self belief of a medieval serf.

I saw seamus coleman and marc Wilson just pass the ball straight out of play last night, and when that happens, there is clearly something going terribly wrong.

Last night should have been a very straightforward game for Ireland. Sweden are absolutely fucking awful. This may not be the greatest Irish side in history, but apart from zlatan (who was pretty bloody mediocre yet again) all of our players are at least one step above their swedish counterparts. They started the game terribly, but as the game wore on, we just got worse and worse until we beat sweden in a race to the bottom.

But it still remains that when you have a manager who sends out a team to play with a two man central midfield, and does things like pick paul green ahead of darron gibson, you can't then say that the garbage they serve up is the fault of the players, or that the players can only play one way.

[garcia]

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Yes, at a time when he was 31 and visibly past it. Of course, he is now still past it.

i thought he looked more springy and agile last night than at any time in the past three years. has he been to one of those anti-aging clinics that are all the rage in the states?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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or was it that he was up against sweden's league one standard defenders?

[anton pulisov]

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The problem with Robbie Keane is not his fitness, it is that he isn't a team player. He's been that way since he broke into the international team. All those coaches and he has learned absolutely nothing since he started playing football. He still relies on his goal poaching instincts, which are great. But he has nothing else to offer.

He's the goalkeeping equivalent of a brilliant shotstopper who fumbles every single corner kick and kicks all his goalkicks into touch.

[Borracho]

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garcia wrote:

Yes, at a time when he was 31 and visibly past it. Of course, he is now still past it.

i thought he looked more springy and agile last night than at any time in the past three years. has he been to one of those anti-aging clinics that are all the rage in the states?

I wonder if it's the same one Morrissey goes to.

[ursus arctos]

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Chepo de la Torre is now available.

Just the man to take over a team that plays in green.

[anton pulisov]

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Irish Times:

Trapattoni defended his decision to make just two like for like changes over the course of the second half against the Swedes, insisting that he did not feel he had players of sufficient quality to change the game as he saw it. “We had no Platini, Boniek, Tardelli or Ibra,” he said. “These are players who might have made a difference but we had none of them.”

What an arse.

There's more:

“Also if we finish third in the table behind Germany and Sweden and better than Austria, that must increase our personality.”

[Borracho]

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I don't think Irish football history will view the Trapattoni years very kindly, even though he did get us to a tournament, which is an increasing rarity where we're concerned. The football was simply too rotten and the mentality too craven for his time in charge to be remembered with any real fondness.

He's not the only problem though. I agree with Dalliance that not enough of our players can beat a man or pass a ball well or control one. There's so little craft or guile there, not helped by the marginalisation of Hoolahan, who at 31 doesn't have much time left anyway. Putting him in the line-up would be a start, and should happen, but it would not trigger the sudden and vast improvement that some people seem to think it would.

The standard of player we've been producing for the last decade or so isn't high enough, even taking into account Trapattoni's repeated stubbornness and numerous wrong decisions. It's mirrored in what is happening to Scotland and Wales and the Nordies too. We're miles behind the likes of Denmark, let alone the Belgians or even the big powers. And no one seems to have much idea of what to do about it. Getting in a new manager, a half-decent one if we're lucky, is only a part of the battle.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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but how do you know what our players can or can't do? You might be surprised what they might be able to achieve if they were to start playing with three in midfield, and passing the ball to each other a bit, and providing each other with passing options other than back to the keeper and kicking it long.

The only time we've ever been remotely organized was under kerr, but that was poisoned by the post saipan sulk, an absurdly difficult group, and Robbie Keane's point blank refusal to score a goal in qualifiers.

Imagine what we might achieve if we had a manager who could organize us a bit, and look to play a bit of football? And I'm not convinced about this whole "Our players aren't good enough." Most international teams are pitiful, and are rendered even worse by a lack of familiarity with each other. A manager who managed to make us close to the sum of our parts would give us a huge advantage and watching us wouldn't be so much of a chore.

[anton pulisov]

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Yes, if Trap had tried a number of tactical formations and lineups, and different personnel, then we'd know if it was the player or the manager who are poor. But he doesn't. We play Whelan in a two man midfield at home to Sweden and away to Russia. The same against everyone, all of the time. Then he only need show up for the first match of the campaign, and leave a piece of paper that says, "play like this, no matter who the opposition is." What exactly does he get paid for if he keeps picking the same shit over and over again?

All the people I know here in Sweden were convinced Sweden were going to lose 2-0. They said they went on to Wikipedia and looked through our squad and were genuinely impressed. They are very keen followers of the Premier League here (half the country seems to support Liverpool) and knew all our players. "You have Coleman, McCarthy and Hoolahan. These are really good players." Most are actually in shock that they've won away to Ireland. This is a huge result for Sweden.

edit: We were beaten because the other team had organisation and a game plan. Many of their players are of a similar level and/or inferior to Ireland. Many have a poor touch. But their manager did his homework. Put Ibra in the hole between Whelan and the back four and the Irish team is too rigid to do anything about it. It's exactly what every team has been doing to Trap's Ireland since Dick Advocaat figured us out in Dublin. Three years ago.

[dalliance]

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What Irish players would you suggest are recognised as tactically and technically accomplished at club level? Who plays for a team that is seen to be a good footballing side - the ex-Wigan boy aside? How many of the squad might expect to see Champions League action this season, or even Europa League?

Is it not something of a coincidence how many foreign managers of some repute ends up fielding a national team from the UK and Ireland in a rudimentary formation while grumbling at how limited the players he has to work with are?

Trap at least has a hell of a lot less to work with than Capello and Eriksson did.

[Borracho]

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Berbaslug, I wish I could share your unshakeable faith in our players' ability to play good football. A small handful of them can. Most of them can't. It's reflected in the middling-to-poor club sides that nearly all of them have ended up playing for.

You really are kidding yourself if you think that a straightforward change of manager will solve the problems. It needs to happen, obviously, but it will only solve some of them. This stuff goes way deeper than just Giovanni Trapattoni being a back-issue.

The Kerr years were shit, by the way. Nearly as boring as the Trapattoni years. Mogadon-powered football.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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just let it rest dalliance. Trappatoni is a professional disgrace. He's a fucking embarrassment to the tattered reputation of italian football.

[Borracho]

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dalliance wrote: How many of the squad might expect to see Champions League action this season, or even Europa League?

There is one Irish player in the Champions League this season, Anthony Stokes. There are two in the Europa League, James McClean and Chris McCann. The last of those is nowhere near the Ireland squad and never will be.

So that's a grand total of one bloke plying his trade in the SPL, and (disregarding McCann) another who earns a living in the Championship.

And there's the rub. We aren't producing the players, irrespective of how lazy and unimaginative and inflexible a coach Trapattoni has become in his old age. The next manager will have to make a lot of bricks from straw if he's going to go even remotely close to qualification for the European Championships.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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Once again AB2 we're not talking about them being a fucking revival of the magical magyars. We can't afford the drugs for a start. Just keep it simple, pass the ball a bit, create some more opportunities, get some level of understanding between the players, and stop making terrible decisions.

[Borracho]

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It was the West Germans who were on drugs.

I'm afraid it's not all down to the manager being a dullard. Too many of these lads just aren't much cop.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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Well don't fucking pick connor sammon, or simon cox or paul green, or glenn whelan, or darren o'dea, or andy keogh or......

The hungarians were playing a different sport to everyone else in the fifties, but it's worth pointing out that they won 16 gold medals at the helsinki games, and 95 olympic medals between 1948 and 1956. (finishing either 3rd or 4th in the medals table) It really was a golden era for hungarian sport. (it's worth remembering though that doping wasn't illegal back then)

[That Night In Barcelona]

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Hoolahan better be some player when he finally gets a game. His reputation from the bench is going through Darren Fletcher levels of inflation.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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I don't know about that. Being better than connor sammon, and being more involved in the game than robbie keane isn't that high a barrier for anyone. I don't think that anyone is suggesting that he's pele.

[dalliance]

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You certainly seem to be desperately reinventing him as the (modest) man who can lead the vanguard of change to make Ireland a passing team.

This naivety in believing that the coach is deliberately playing against the natural instincts of his team is bizarre. Why would do that? And who are these players who can play a passing and possession based game that the rest of us are missing?

[anton pulisov]

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"THE HEROES OF DUBLIN"

A headline I just saw in a paper in a Swedish supermarket. This is how proud they are of notching up an away victory in Dublin.

Sweden are not Brazil either, let's stop talking the Irish into the ground. The Swedish squad is fairly shit and they worship Roy Hodgson as a tactical genius who reinvented and modernised the sport in their country.

But they at least try to play different formations every now and then depending on the opposition.

dalliance wrote: Trap at least has a hell of a lot less to work with than Capello and Eriksson did.

It's a fair point that Ireland have a limited squad. So why then does Trap make us play in the same formation as his Juve sides, for every single match? He needs to be trying out different formations depending on the opponent. Yet he lets Ireland play every single match using the same formation he used for Juventus in the 1980s, no matter who the opposition is. We have to play the Faroe Islands? 4-4-2. We have to play world champions Spain at Euro 2012. 4-4-2. But oh, Simon Cox, a championship player, will be the second striker and he will drop into midfield every now and then to deal with Xavi and Iniesta.

We have a limited squad, yet the arrogance with which Trap decides the tactics would make you think we are Brazil. It doesn't matter who we play, he thinks we're so good that we'll steam roll whoever they are them with our 4-4-2.

We're limited. That's why we need to play 4-5-1. I see the limitations of the Ireland team. Trap does not.

[Borracho]

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Glenn Whelan is out of the Austria match with a hamstring injury. Last night was his 51st cap and may just have been his final one.

It's beyond debate that Trapattoni has made a succession of awful blunders over the last few years, certainly since the Paris play-off, and that he is grossly overpaid for what he actually does. But let's save ourselves the eventual disappointment of expecting a dramatic improvement after he does leave. The rot goes deeper than one deluded, over-the-hill manager. A fair bit deeper.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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what is much more likely to happen is that mindless drunk delaney will appoint someone truly terrible, and we will wind up thinking that the trap era was some kind of fucking golden age.

We'll probably wind up with fucking mick mac fucking Cartfuck.

Dalliance, for the love of god just let it go. Trappatoni is a conman who is stealing our money. He doesn't go to matches. he doesn't watch our players, he hasn't learned english. he turns up and talks gibberish to the media. He talks about enthusiasmus, talks about results being all that matters until we lose, at which point he blames the players.

he barely went to watch a game until we lost 6-1 to germany in october and he was nearly fired. Everyone was telling him to pick wes hoolahan, so to appease everyone he goes to see norwich get crushed by Arsenal and for hoolahan to fail. unfortunately norwich win 1-0, with wes hoolahan getting a man of the match, and goes to see Derby county.

In the next match he plays conor sammon from the start, and brings on three other derby county players, and gives hoolahan half an hour in which he scores a brilliant goal, and trap looks like someone has just told him that hoolahan had just fucked his wife. here's a bit of video showing how amazing sammon is Followed by hoolahan's goal and trap's hilarious reaction

in the next game he gives hoolahan 10 minutes against sweden but is so won over by conor sammon that he starts him against austria in the hole, and plays him for 90 minutes, and leaves hoolahan on the bench. Conor Sammon may be the worst forward to play for ireland since ray treacy, but he's not a second striker.

We're 2-1 up heading into the last 10 minutes, he takes off shane long, and brings on paul green, leaving sammon on his own up front, we completely give up all hope of keeping the ball, and austria no longer have to defend, and we spend the remainder of the game inside our own box and conceded with virtually the last kick of the game.

He's a fucking disgrace. he has no plan other than keep it tight at the back and hope that platini or rossi nick a goal, or that agnelli gives the ref an alfa romeo and we get a 'timely' penalty. except we're not in italy any more and he's not managing juventus, and it's not 1982.

the other night, when we were struggling to get back into the game, he takes off walters and brings on simon cox to play on the right wing. Last season cox scored 5 goals in 40 games playing up front for nottingham forest. He leaves hoolahan and robbie brady on the bench. Indeed he also takes off james mcClean and puts on anthony pilkington, a teammate of hoolahan's who has never turned up for a squad before.

the sooner he just fucks off, the better. he spends 340 days a year sitting in his little garage office. let him spend the whole year there.

[Outside Agent]

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Regardless of who the next manager is - Hughton, O'Neill, whoever - the same criticisms will be fired at him as is currently fired at Trapattoni. And Kerr and McCarthy before him. That there's better players being left on the bench while inferior ones get a game.

This is a basic feature of international (ie representative) football. We have the players respective clubs and their status to act as a comparative measure, and it's easy to accuse a manager of stupidity for selecting a player who plies his trade at a club who are lower in the league than the club of the player who he keeps out of the side. But then a manager will see the logic of choosing Andy Townsend ahead of Ronnie Whelan in the 1989/90 period, or choose Teddy Sheringham ahead of Robbie Fowler, Andy Cole & Stan Collymore in the 1995/96 period. Neither decision was clever in the sense of picking players on form or picking what are regarded as your best players, but they were the right decisions for the team. Trap choosing players based on what he thinks that they can bring to a team rather than how they've been playing for their clubs recently is hardly a departure from managerial norms. It's just this somewhat flawed approach is being taken to the most stubborn extreme.

None of this is to justify Trap's selections, by the way - I've long since said that McShane, Whelan, Green and now Sammon should be nowhere near the squad - but a new manager could come in and after working with the squad decide that Anthony Pilkington (on the bench for a relegation-threatened Norwich) is a better option in midfield than Darron Gibson (playing regularly for top eight Everton). That's a manager's perogative and that's football, but the same criticisms would be fired at the manager.

[Kevin S]

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Hang on a minute. Relegation threatened? In September? Give us some time to screw it up at least! And we recently drew with that Everton anyway.

Anyway Pilkington's a very good winger, with an eye for goal. He's only recently come back from injury and will have to play second fiddle to Nathan Redmond for now.