Great supporters ...over 3000 going to Russia

Got our tickets

It seems that anyone who has applied (that I know of) has received their full allocation of tickets. Ours are on the way, Total cost of trip, bar food drink, underground and miscellaneous adventures, has worked out at a paltry €587.50, i.e. Return Dub - Lon, Return Lon - Mosc, 3 nights in 4 star hotel, match ticket and visa. Hurrah, anyone do it any cheaper than that?

 

Moscow

Not a bad price Len but beat this. Shannon-Moscow return, 5 nights B&B in Moscow hotel + 2 nights in St Petersburg), return train tickets (Mos-St P incl 1 night), match ticket, visa, insurance for €860. Now if only the beer isn’t as dear as I read.

 

And we'll have Duff in his best position with Keane and Morrison banging in the goals, the return of Steven Carr bombing up the right wing, possibley the goal threat of Steven Reid and Holland and Kinsella running the mid field and getting the goals coming in from the 2nd row if the attack, you'll also need good luck getting past the best keeper in the premier league in Shay Given. Should be a good match but if Mick get's his tactics right the boys in green should come away with three points, imho.

 

I hope we can make the step up to tier one as you put it, we've plenty of great young players who you wont see in the first match but one or two who you may see in the Lansedown encounter. The side facing you will be much improved, for example most people expect that Harte will be dropped in favour of two full backs (One voted the best right back in the premiership, the other, who was injured all last year, was voted the best right sided player in Europe during his last season) one of those two should be versitile enough to play on the left side. Duff should be playing left wing with a strike partnership of Morrison and Keane who's link up play together was brilliant against Denmark when we beat them three nil. The starting line up will most likely be...

Gk - Given (Newcastle)
Dl - Finnan (Fulham)
Dr - Carr (Tottenham)
Dc - Breen (West Ham)
Dc - Cunningham (Birmingham)
Ml - Duff (Blackburn)
Mr - Reid (Millwall) OR Delap (Southampton)
Mc - Holland (Ipswich)
Mc - Kinsella (Charlton)
Fc - Keane (Leeds)
Fc - Morrison (Birmingham)

The key attacking threats will be Duffs trickery that can unlock any defence aswell as his crossing and cutting inside and scoring fantastic goals. The power, pace, skill and eye for goal from Clinton Morrison will mean he's always a theat and his link up play with Robbie Keane was fantastic against Denmark. Robbie Keane will most likely play behind Morrison in his more natural possesion useing his pace, skill and vision to play in Morrison while making a nusence of himself for the defence who find it hard to mark him, he also runs through and scores a variety of goals himself.

If Reid plays, his unbeliveble shot will be a threat, having not ever played a full match for Ireland he already has two goals to his name, the first one against Russia in the friendly a while back was from Reid. Matt Holland provides a goal threat coming off the second row of attack from behind the strikers, his 25 yard shot is as good, deadly and accurate as any in Europe, shown scoring great goals against Cameroon and Portugal, Mark Kinsella, though more a defencive styled player, can also chip in with goals.

Steve Carr, if fit, is always a goal threat. Spurs fans scream "shooooooot" any time he touches the ball because of his spectacular goal against Man United amoungst others, he's a right back with unbeliveble pace who cuts inside and scores goals, alot like Zeige except better. Finnan, on the other hand, wont score himself but provides a deadly cross, his passing accuracy is the third finest in the premiership according to the Opta index and he gets alot of assists, it was him who did that turn inside against Russia to give an inch perfect cross to Robbie Keane in the friendly, though we expect him to be playing on the left.

The other two defenders will most likely be Gary Breen and Kenny Cunningham, though Cunningham didn't feature much in the world cup I think he's the best centre half we have. A model of consistency he is good on the ball, in the air and on the ground and rarely puts a foot wrong. Beside him is Gary Breen, more of a footballing centre half he's excellent in the air and his passing is superb on the ground, he's expected to be our skipper for the night. On goals, Cunningham has never scored but Breen going forward for set peices has a great record of 6 international goals in around 50 caps so is a threat that should not be taken lightly inside the oppisition box when going forward, as seen in the world cup.

In goals you all know about Given, a world class player who was last year voted the best keeper in the premiership and helped Ireland to only concede 2 goals in our qualifying group and he was in the nets for our home matches Vs Holland and Portugal and one of those goals was a shock goal from Andorra.

This is what will most likely be going up against you in the match come september 7th, should be a much improved side from the team that beat Russia 2-0 in friendly recently but Russia will also be much better then the side we faced so it should be a good match.

 

Whatever shortcomings McCarthy may have in the man management stakes, tactically he is as good as there is. If you look at 4 games from our not so recent past: Holland (h) WCQ, Cameroon, Germany and Spain, he did well in all. In all 4 games, Ireland came back stronger in the second half and in all 4 games Ireland were generally considered to have played their opponents off the park.

People have argued that Van Gaal screwed up as did Schaefer, Voller and Camacho, but isn't it strange that all these managers screwed up and McCarthy was the 'lucky' beneficiary? The other managers may have made mistakes, but many were forced upon them by McCarthy's tactics. Before the Spain game, the general feeling was Ireland would be lucky to lose by only 1 goal, but lose they would. Then come game time Spain were lucky not to lose, not Ireland. McCarthy does have a bit of a penchant for playing Duff out of position recently, but usually his tactics and homework on the other team have been spot on. I think we have to give him credit there, rather than saying the other team screwed up.

Now I know that these 4 games amounted to one win and 3 draws, with one loss on penalties, but when you have the likes of Spain, Germany and Holland on the backfoot for most of the second half, you've got to be doing something correct.

 

I'd disagree to an extent, the reason we did better in the second half of our matches in the world cup is because that's when Duff moved to the wing and we put a real striker to partner Keane up front but every game we started with Duff being wasted up front when it should have stayed with the way we we're doing well with.

 

Not true in the Dutch game where Duff played inside all game. He also played inside all game against Cameroon. Against Germany, Ireland were already playing them off the park before he moved outside and the same goes against Spain, though both goals against the latter two did come when he had moved outside.

Tactically there is much more to Ireland's game than Duff's position, and where I would give McCarthy the credit is that in the 4 games I mentioned, the team played well as a team, giving the so called giants of football a run for their money. He did the same against Portugal.

Ireland may not win every game, and I'm not suggesing that they would have won the WC, but I don't think any team would have had the better of Ireland by 2/3 goals or so, and that includes Brazil. Tactically, McCarthy is very good at containing the other side. His weakness, such as it is, is that there does seem to be a difficulty in putting stronger teams away. Nevertheless, he and his backroom boys can play with the best of them.

 

My problem is Duff is a world class winger and with the greatest of respect a distinctly average centre forward, his goals tally goes to show that. Also, with him there Robbie Keane has to push furthur forward and he prefers to play more 'in the hole'. The strike partnership of Keane and Duff, as a partnership, have yielded four goals in two years (I think) That's not good enough. McCarthy should have seen that and played Duff in his best position. Also, McCarthy dropped the man voted the best right back in the premiership for a reserve player which I thought was a poor decision, as was subbing on Connolly ahead of Morrison. No doubt Mick has done well but I think his strenght is his ability to keep team spirit high rather then being a tactically astute manager, I mean we may have done well against the big teams but what exactly did Mick do tactically that helped us there, it was the under rated ability of our players. Case in pont, Kelly was getting a roasting from Overmars, everyone knew he had to come off at half time or he would get a second yellow and be sent off, Mick left him on and he got sent off, Finnan came on, sured up that wing defencively and set up the winner. He got lucky on that account, had Kelly not been sent off he would have stayed on the pitch for 90 minutes and we wouldn't have won.

 

How do you know?

 

Because we went from a right back who was getting a roasting, was our worst player that night and was a liability to one who then let nothing past him the entire night. This sured up our defence which in turn helped our attack. Also, Finnan got the assist in the winning goal and he benifited our attack more then Kelly as well as sureing up our defence.

 

You don't know for sure, all you can really say is mere conjecture; and Finnan's success against Overmars may have had more to do with the fact that Overmars was taken off shortly after Finnan came on, allowing him to raid up the wing.

 

I didn't mention Overmars though you are correct, that was a Van Gaal blunder, but I still don't rate McCarthy tactically.

 

This is precisely my point about McCarthy. Every time something goes in his favour, well then Van Gaal took off Overmars too early, Schaefer didn't react to half time changes, Voller (Germany) sat back too early on a 1 goal lead, Raul couldn't play the offside trap well, whatever the excuse is.

But Ireland's success, and by inference, McCarthy's, comes from the other side making mistakes. There is no way it can come from McCarthy being a superior tactician, is there? Like any manager he has his flaws - man management is not a strong point - but too often well executed plans by the Irish side are attributed to Ireland being 'lucky' or the other side being 'stupid'. McCarthy made the point himself when he almost bumped into Van Gaal in Schipol. McCarthy was going to Saipan with Ireland and Van Gaal was off to manage Barcelona. As McCarthy said, if the result had been reversed in September, what were the chances of him going off to manage Barcelona?

It is too easy to say that all he contributes is a team spirit, blah, blah, blah. Team spirit will not win games, nor will it teach a team to change from a 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2 when necessary, nor does it help in making substitutions. During the WC, nearly everyone of McCarthy's substitutions had a precise and immediate impact on the game. Obviously McCarthy has pulled some blunders in his time, but by and large his tactics of late have been spot on.

For all the perceived mistakes he made against Holland, Ireland beat them 1-0 with 10 men. I believe the reason he didn't start Finnan against Cameroon was that McAteer told him he was fit and Kelly already had WC experience. Finnan himself even admitted he was overawed when he came on as a sub. Against Germany, Ireland came up against a keeper having the tournament of his life and with Spain, McCarthy might have handled things better, especially in extra time, but no one who saw that game could say that Ireland were second best.

McCarthy must be the luckiest manager in international football to have all these other coaches make such fundamental mistakes which play directly into his hands. Eventually, credit will have to be given to McCarthy - there's no way he can be that lucky always. Maybe, just maybe there's another reason.

 

Like I said about the subs, if he was in any way a good manager he would have started with that team anyway, why make the same changed subbing off the same under preforming players every time?

Why did he drop Finnan for Kelly? Why did he play our best player out of position? Why could he not see he left one of our best strikers without a minute of football? Why could he not see that Gary Kelly is a right back and nothing more, was ineffective and we had Reid on the bench? Why did he bring Kennedy ahead of Reid in the first place? Why did he sub on Connolly ahead of the obviously more talented Morrison? Why is he going to leave Harte in the team and therefor drop one of the better full backs in Europe?

And people forget the debacle that was Euro 2000 qualifyed, the last minute goal when putting ten men behind the ball, that boils down to McCarthy aswell. Also, I think with a better manager we would have beaten Spain and then Korea to be in the semi finals.

I have quarrels with McCarthys team selections and his stubborness to a system when it isn't working, remember 3-5-2 with Ian Harte as a centre half? Remember when he dropped Irwin, told him he had to prove himself and forced the best full back we've ever had to retire?

I dislike the way he favourites some players and ignores others when they're clearly better, again, Kennedy over Reid and Connolly over Morrison are inexplicible decisions.

He's a decent manager but tactically I don't rate him and with the players we have we chould have, and should have, done better, espically against Cameroon.

 

Fair enough, I don't agree; you believe him to be crap and I believe him to be very tactically astute, albeit too human bytimes. He's not the best manager, but in my opinion he's significantly ahead of many of his peers.

 

Finnan / Harte / Duff

Slash/ED commented that Finnan shored up the defence when he came on against Holland! I don't think so? He was turned inside out by Overmars and if anything looked more vulnerable than Kelly had. The key to Ireland's win that Van Gaal's remarkable decision to take Overmars off shortly after Finnan's arrival. That decision let Finnan and Ireland off the hook big time and we prospered as a result. Having said that I was very impressed (and pleasantly surprised) by Finnan's performances in the WC. The fact that Steve Carr will miss the Russian match does not now concern me as much as his absence at the WC had when it confirmed he would miss it. Finnan is not as good but is an excellent replacement.

As for Harte being left out, there's no chance of that happening, particularly as he's holding his place in Leeds side. If he gets his confidence back, he'll do fine particularly if Kilbane is on the left to protect him. For that reason and others, there's no way I can see McCarthy switching Duff out to the wing. I am certain it will be Duff and Keane up front against Russia so there's no point in speculating as to what might happen if Duff is on the wing. In any event he's done very well through the middle and the quick feat of him and Keane together are a nightmare for most centre half pairings. It is interesting however to note that in yesterday's game the role's were reversed i.e. Duff played on the wing for Blackburn while Kilbane played up front beside Phillips for Sunderland.

 

I agree with most of what you write, Pat Mustard. However, you are taking a slightly skewed view of Overmars' performance in that game. He would have turned nearly any right full-back in the world inside-out that day and its not really a reflection on Kelly or Finnan that they struggled with him. He was exceptional.

Not only did Holland lose all sense of balance when he was replaced by a forward, but they took off their best attacking player and most likely source of a goal. It was all the more ironical that Ireland's goal came from that side too because the full-back was free to get forward.

However, I actually think Finnan is a better full-back than Gary Kelly.

 

I'd agree on all except I hate the Duff and Keane partnership, trickey, yes (But Duffs best preformances WC and outside have been on the wing) their goal return as a partnership is pathetic imo, both great players but they don't play well, or direct enough, together.

 

the match..

just arrived here from rivals.net

really looking forward to the match, there are 6 of us lads going and we have decided to take a holiday, 5 days in moscow and 5 days in St Petersburg as I can't see any of us getting the opportunity to go there again.

anybody have any idea how much a pint is over there?