England v Ireland

Wish the commentators would stop going on about DCLs fashion sense!

 

Same. Poor mans martin bullock


So exciting to watch but rarely turns to owt

 

Watching Scotland.....good game

 

Just been replaced by foden equally as good both trying to oust sterling not a bad place to be in

 

Bring back the good old days when we had quality like Jay Bothroyd to call upon.

 

Nice to see our former captain back at Oakwell South.....

Edit - just got subbed. To be fair, I didn't hear his name mentioned much.

 

Still winning?

 

Something I don't understand. The Nations League was supposed to replace meaningless friendlies. So why are we having friendlies to warm up for the Nations League?

 

England played well enough.

Southgate’s got massive selection problems.

The only 3 certain starters for me are Henderson, Sterling & Kane with TAA, Maguire & Chilwell as probable starters. The rest is anyone’s guess.

Sancho, Grealish, Rashford fighting for one place.

Rice, Winks, Mount, Phillips, Barkley, Foden all fighting for one spot alongside Henderson.

No idea which keeper he’ll pick.

Don’t think any of our centre backs with the exception of Joe Gomez have done that well over the past 12 months & he’s had knee surgery today.

And then right back where we’ve got about 5 quality ones. I imagine we’ll go with Trent & use Walker as a centre back but he clearly rates Trippier & James too.

As for Ireland, that Stephen Kenny’s got one hell of a job on his hands if he can get that side building attacks from the back, looked completely unsuited to that style tonight & with only about 12 international games a year it’s going to be hard to improve much. Surely they’ve got to play to their strengths?

 

There's an acknowledgment over here that Ireland have got probably the weakest squad they've had in 50 years and whatever style they play they're not up to it.
The new manager is trying to play "modern" football but many want him to go back to the traditional more industrial approach. Either way I'm afraid Connor isn't very highly rated.

 

Soz Helen dint see ya reply cos my Scottish mate wer just gettin giddy when ...oops 1-1....we got really engrossed doing ping pong txt lol..
Glad they won tho..

 

I just think it’s incredibly tough to introduce a new style of play when they play so few games a year. Hourihane & Hendrick are both pretty direct central midfielders. Hourihane’s got a great delivery on him & Hendrick is great at getting shots off & feeding on knockdowns from a centre forward but trying to play tika taka suits neither of them.

All I can see them doing is get worse & end up having an embarrassing result or two against well organised, poor quality sides.

 

The all round state of Irish football is shocking. Crowds at club level are abysmal, standard extremely poor. Everybody supports Man U or Liverpool or Celtic etc. Can't see it changing.
There's moves afoot towards an all Ireland league which might boost interest but I really can't see it making much difference.

 

Would the national teams still be able to exist as separate entities if they go the all Ireland league route? I suppose there is a precedent there with Welsh teams playing in England but I saw somewhere the reason we have never really had a Great Britain team is because FIFA have indicated that it would affect the status of the separate nations in their eyes(there was a lot of talk about this before the Team GB squad was announced for the 2012 Olympics).

 

The Irish League is getting stronger. Dundalk have had some success in recent years.

 

They seem to have found a way round it. There's a proposal currently being floated which has quite a bit of support. It will be interesting to see if it succeeds.
They revived a champions play off again this year in which Dundalk battered Linfield. Things seem to be moving in that direction albeit slowly.

 

Dundalk are being overtaken by Shamrock Rovers though Dundalk have made it to the group stages of the Europa League but only on the back of a huge slice of luck of the draw. Their final qualifying game was against a team from the Faroes.
An indication of the standards is that the top striker in the league for the past few years has been Pat Hoban who struggled to make an impact at Mansfield and the standout talent in the league is Jack Byrne who couldn't cut it at Oldham or Kilmarnock.

 

Absolutely stupid of us wanting a friendly with england giving our recent record as been good. The team isn't just good enough. Maybe nice lade but simply nowhere near the level of the players the last euros let alone the up and coming one. Plain stupid