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[torres]

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Dalliance and Delaney must be the only two people in Europe who would keep Trap in gainful employment.

Trap has been a dinosaur for at least 15 years, he should be pruning olive trees in Tuscany.

[Borracho]

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Ireland are playing in all black, and surprisingly are dictating the play in the opening six or seven minutes, albeit without looking particularly dangerous.

Rain is lashing down, and the angle of it appears to be falling directly into the Austrians' faces. That might be a help to us for the rest of the half.

[ursus arctos]

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Black shirts in Vienna?

What could possibly go wrong?

torres has Trap all wrong. He'd never go to Tuscany, that's practically a different country for him. When he finally hangs up his whistle, he'll just spend every day with his pals at the petrol station in Busto Arsizio.

[Borracho]

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This match is awful so far, worse than Friday.

[Borracho]

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Ireland have junked the long ball tactics for tonight, which is nice. But it's all a bit laboured.

Pilkington has had a shot into the side netting, and Alaba has just forced a good save out of David Forde from outside the box. Those are the only real efforts of note so far.

[Borracho]

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Alaba looks a class above everybody else on the field -- except David Forde, who has just made another good save, this time from Harnik.

[Borracho]

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Andreas Weimann is presented with a good chance but blasts it straight at Forde.

Austria have stepped up the pace a lot in the last few minutes. And the ref has let a few of their players away with rough challenges. Long will be counting his bruises in the morning.

[Borracho]

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A great block by Coleman stops Harnik from scoring. Harnik should have done better though.

Austria are all over us now. Fifteen minutes to go.

[Toro Toro]

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My dodgy Austrian feed of this has just informed me that Trap is bringing on Ein Neunstürmer.

FEED THE FISH AND HE WILL SCORE!

[Borracho]

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Alaba rifles the ball into the roof of the net after Ireland fail to clear Fuchs' cross properly. That's it.

Trapattoni, who a minute earlier brought on Conor Sammon yet again for Shane Long, deserves it. We're out unless we score a goal in the next eight or nine minutes.

[Toro Toro]

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"Alaba" is the name of a fish too, right?

[Borracho]

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So, we're out. And perhaps that's no bad thing.

[Outside Agent]

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The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: Trap was bemoaning the fact that we don't have our own league, like sweden. This has caused enormous anger among league of Ireland fans, because when he took over the job League of Ireland teams considered teams from sweden an effective bye to the next round of european.

Trap's comment about the domestic league might have merit if he was limited to selecting players from it. But he's not, so he's talking bullshit. Again.

The last time Ireland lost in Vienna, Dublin won the All-Ireland a couple of weeks later. I like that omen.

[Borracho]

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It appears that Trapattoni is going to be sacked either tomorrow, or later in the week.

[anton pulisov]

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The last time Ireland lost in Vienna, a former Ireland captain was appointed manager for the next campaign.

Roy Keane. You know it makes sense.

[anton pulisov]

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garcia wrote: "there is not the tribune".

He means Athlone Town had no stands at their ground.

edit: oh right, you knew that.

[anton pulisov]

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And yes, Roy Keane was probably the most effective player at international level in 2001-2002. Him and Marc Wilmots.

You can stick your Rivaldo. Anyone who thinks Rivaldo was a more valuable player than Roy Keane knows nothing about football. Roy Keane single-handedly destroyed a midfield of Edgar Davids and Zinedine Zidane. Big Phil would have KILLED to have Roy Keane. KILLED. Maybe then he wouldn't have needed all that help from FIFA to get past Belgium.

Would Rivaldo have turned up half-injured in Amsterdam and still played the Dutch midfield off the park? Would he fuck.

And dalliance is still massively misrepresenting the anti-Trap comments on here. We are not claiming that Ireland is world class. We are saying that we are limited, and therefore need to adjust midfield to compensate, and try and get the most out of our players by not choosing a system that requires Conor Sammon to be on the field. You know, football management, that kind of thing. But you know that, you ol' shit stirrer you...

[dalliance]

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And dalliance is still massively misrepresenting the anti-Trap comments on here. We are not claiming that Ireland is world class. We are saying that we are limited, and therefore need to adjust midfield to compensate, and try and get the most out of our players by not choosing a system that requires Conor Sammon to be on the field. You know, football management, that kind of thing. But you know that, you ol' shit stirrer you...

You are saying there are limitations maybe, garcia too and AB2 has no illusions about the quality but Bertie Berbaslug labours under the misapprehension that there's a good football team there aching to break free of Trap's clutches. Actually I think you said they could stick another man in midfield and play some football too as if it was that simple.

They seemed to play more of a passing game in Vienna and how far did that get them. As Quinn said the other day, that;s not really been the Irish way from long before Tap wandered onto the scene.

[Borracho]

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We couldn't make any headway tonight because the quality of the final ball was mediocre at best. McCarthy had a few decent touches but that was all. Other than the Pilkington shot into the side netting, and a half-chance that fell to Walters, I can't think of any real opportunities we had. Maybe I'm forgetting one, but that's all.

And this was against a very average Austrian defence, not one of the top outfits. We lack class, in a word. There isn't enough of it in our squad to break down the mediocre sides, let alone the strong ones, even if you put Wes Hoolahan in. We've taken two points out of 12 from the four games against Sweden and Austria, and scored three goals in those six hours of football. That's disgraceful. It's Sweden and Austria, not Spain and Germany.

When Duff retired from international football, I remember thinking that this was now the thinnest Irish squad since possibly the late 1960s, and this campaign hasn't exactly made me do a 180 degree turn.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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There's more hope of john delaney appointing me than Roy Keane.

Why was conor sammon playing? I mean why? If he wanted to take off long, why didn't he move walters up front and bring on robbie brady to sling in crosses. If only for one reason, Robbie brady is fairly good at crossing the ball at set pieces. I've seen Irish players score from at least three of them. I'd have even taken simon cox ahead of conor sammon.

Watching him lumber about the pitch in his ungainly way, with his big shaved head, he looks a bit like me, and plays a bit like I would if I was a lot fitter, and still terrible at football. In a way it makes me feel good, because if conor sammon can play for Ireland, I can still say "potentially So can I".

And with psul Green out there, it almost sounds like I am. Unfortunately my namesake isn't very good. You see trap has brought the international game a lot closer to the ordinary fans, by making us all too aware that any useless cunt can play for Ireland, so each of us can legitimately feel why not us?

It's not like there's a rational underpinning to a lot of it. I mean Conor Fucking sammon. I mean it's not his fault. It's his dream come true. I don't begrudge him a minute of it. It's just that I think there are probably better players whose dreams we should probably give precedence to.

When we appointed trap after Steve Fucking Staunton, it was just too good to be true. We went from a weird incapable novice, to a man who seemed to be the most accomplished operator we could dream of getting. Here was someone who had not only survived, but thrived at the very top level of italian football.

Sure juventus had certain advantages when it came to winning titles, but Trap was able to be in charge of all of these star players, and rule them like a god, and if there was any manager out there who was better than trap, they would have appointed him. But they didn't, for a very long time.

He was the anti steve staunton, and it was going to be great. And after staunton's miserable louth weirdo image trap looked like something out of a movie.

Unfortunately he also turned out to be Lazy, Tactically inept, a poor judge of player, with a tendency to form inexplicable fascinations with desperately ordinary players. He is a terrible resource manager, and actively opposed to developing young players.

He got us playing with some basic level of organization, and we started to stop losing 5-2 to cyprus. He was helped out by Dunne being very good for him, along with Duff, and given, and robbie Keane was actually scoring quite a few goals in qualifiers.

Basically the plan was little more than rigid 4-4-2, keep it tight and hope for big performances from the two at the back to get us a clean sheet, and for the two guys up front to do a bit of magic. And we've basically stuck with that plan.

In the beginning we were very grateful because we didn't have any plan at all under steve staunton, and that didn't work out for us at all.

Unfortunately we stuck with exactly the same plan regardless of circumstance Regardless of opponent. We've paid trap €10 million over the six years for this. For this he basically did 30-40 days work a year.

I mean fair dues to him. No-one ever said that Mama trap raised a fool. But it has turned out that we appointed someone almost entirely unsuitable for managing a small countries intenational team.

For that you ideally want a youngish, hard working person, who goes to games, who is a very good judge of player, and is tactically adept enough to build a system of play about his best players. Just find a way that they can attack and defend as a team, and try and get them as familiar as possible with it. And ideally you would like him to give young players a chance if they show promise.

You want a resource maximising manager. One who is able to use the players available to him to create a system that functions to an international standard, and gets the best out of them. If they're well organized, then they'll probably be successful, because given the chop and change nature of international football most teams aren't well organized, and usually don't play a system that suits them.

If our last couple of groups have taught us anything, the gap between the first seed, and the rest of the teams can usually be pretty large, and you don't have to be that great to finish second.

Any new Ireland manager is going to be faced with yawning chasm at centre half and in goal. Dunne and O'Shea are surely going to retire, and forde isn't exactly amazing.

Apart from that, we have two good full backs, both of whom are solid, and coleman in particular is very good at attacking, and is well able to overlap a narrow right sided attacker. McCarthy, Gibson, houlahan, with possibly david myler and jeff hendrick turning out ok, and even paul green seems to be able to do some functional things. But those players could probably pass the ball around to each other given the opportunity. Get forward when necessary, and get back behind the ball when we don't have it.

we have a very fast forward, who is able to hold the ball up reasonably well, and can bring teammates into the game. he's erratic in front of goal, so we should try and give him more and better chances. A player like that offers you a lot of tactical flexibility. Probably his best game for west brom was against liverpool on the opening day of last season. He got agger sent off, won two penalties (missed one horribly) and knocked skrtel and lucas around like skittles.

We've never had someone like that before. We've had big lumbering forwards who barely had a fast twitch muscle fibre between them. Or we had a sluggish smaller guy trundling around alongside them. We should take advantage of long's peculiar talents.

Walters is a decent enough player and can act as a reasonable replacement. He's the scouse dirk kuyt. Walters is a decent narrow right sided attacker, and works very hard. He could form a very solid partnership with an overlapping Coleman, and get in the box for crosses from the left. We also have the terminally disappointing McGeady, Who could possibly one day be good. the game but limited mcClean, and Robbie Brady.

He seems to be our most promising potential player. He's very skilful, he's very fast, and hurtles around like a little tank. He's quite aggressive, any time I've seen him play he's always tries to barge his opponent to the ground at least once a game. I like his attitude. He seems to be a strong dribbler, and he strikes the ball quite well. He also seems to be quite good at crossing the ball from set pieces, which is incredibly useful for a team like us. If his decision making is any good, and he develops at hull, he might actually be really good. I mean all we have at this point is hope.

But essentially, if the next manager is prepared to play with three midfielders, we just about have the players to carry it off reasonably successfully. And if we can hang onto the ball a bit more, and bring our full backs and wide players into play more, we might even manage to distract attention from our glass jaw.

And anything has got to be better than this shite. that was just depressing tonight. It's got to have a massively crushing effect on the players. Playing for Ireland is probably just misery and pain for them at the moment. Because it's pretty fucking grim watching them.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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You are saying there are limitations maybe, garcia too and AB2 has no illusions about the quality but Bertie Berbaslug labours under the misapprehension that there's a good football team there aching to break free of Trap's clutches. Actually I think you said they could stick another man in midfield and play some football too as if it was that simple.

You misunderstand me dalliance. I'm not saying these players are amazing. God knows, but the point is that they don't have to be amazing to be effective at international level. We have a lot of decent players, who could be a hell of a lot better organized. That can carry you a long way in international football.

Our players would look a lot more effective, if we didn't spend every game being outnumbered in midfield, and unable to pick up a player playing between the lines. Our players would have better passing options and wouldn't have to go back to the keeper all the time. We use our wide players very sporadically.

There is little sense of control to it, because our midfield play is so rushed. If we can't get enough good possession to the wide players, they can't get enough crosses in for our two forwards to be of much use. There's no pattern to our play and it's reached a point where a lot of the time we just wind up pumping it over the midfield to our 5'11" striker to knock it down to Robbie Keane.

We have to try something else.

The point is that we don't have a Roy Keane any more, and Robbie Keane is completely useless apart from scoring the odd goal. We have to try something else. I mean it's been one catalogue of disaster since the play off game against estonia. We were humiliated in every game in Euro 2012, we were utterly destroyed by germany at lansdowne road. We lost to a terrible sweden team, and shipped two goals to austria at home. We lost tonight without a whimper. Every time we try the same thing, and every time we get the same terrible results.

maybe we should try something else. That something else should ideally not be conor sammon.

They seemed to play more of a passing game in Vienna and how far did that get them. As Quinn said the other day, that;s not really been the Irish way from long before Tap wandered onto the scene.

Ah now, that long ball thing died a death with jack Charlton. The Charlton era ended so badly that it was clear that we had to change. That play off against holland at anfield was really horrible. I mean holland had the decency to put on a great show, while only scoring twice, which I thought was very honourable, but that was the end of that.

Mick McCarthy for all of his faults wanted us to play passing football. Brian Kerr would be positively offended at the suggestion that his teams didn't try and play passing football. God alone knows what happened in the staunton era. It's difficult to get a handle on what was going on then. it all went really weird for a while.

The thing is that we just don't have the players for the long ball game. We've got a team of players who are 5'11" and 5'9". We're not a small team, but we're not a big team either. It's very clear that these players were not selected to play a long ball game.

And anyway you can't play the long ball game if your midfielders are sitting so deep, and your full backs are limited in their attacking scope. It's a fucking disaster. It's completely unwatchable. I used to go to Ireland matches all the time under mcCarthy and Kerr. I even went to a few under Pinger. But I can barely watch this ireland team any more. The only Ireland Games I've been to under trap were the two home play-off games. I struggle to watch them at the moment. It's just so horrible and pointless.

It should be a lot better than this.

[Toro Toro]

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He's gone.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

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Couldn't they have waited one more game?

[Toro Toro]

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To clarify, looking again at the thread title; Trap's gone. Delaney is not.

[Borracho]

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I hope the Martin O'Neill years are at least a bit more fun than the last decade has been.

John Delaney has been on the radio saying that international football is "three or four per cent" of what he does in his €400,000-a-year job. Maybe the time has come for him to start increasing that percentage, before we end up as seventh seeds for Russia 2018.