Subject: Ireland Vs...

you right - in that kind of games we need someone very fast.

Next week China. Sverige beat them 9-0 today, so our goal is clear: 10 goal difference.

china have polish manager:)

how come neville got played ahead of brunton?? identical stats and form except brunton has more pace?

good point, we missed him for some reason.

Unfortunately my first instinct when i saw the formation was right. Walsh isn't quick enough to be able to play central defence. It actually looked like he might get away with until he gave away the penalty. The players who can play in the middle are Hanrahan, Docherty, Kukureka, Brunton and Neville. Docherty is the best option
You need to move the wide backs a step in line with the rest of the defence or move the rest of the defence up. The 3rd goal happened because the defence was stood on the edge of the penalty area instead of stepping up.
To be honest the Belgian formation was terrible. Any width would have wrecked it and i cannot believe they played with a 3-man defence. It's just asking for trouble.

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welsh was a good choice for me... panalty wasn't fault of his pace, but defending...

To be honest the Belgian formation was terrible. Any width would have wrecked it and i cannot believe they played with a 3-man defence.

it was very good decision of Hellsangel... he suprised us - we though that he will play similar like in past game with hungary... and that was a reason why we didnt use a winger. 3 defs was enough to stop us playing throught the middle...

Docherty - yes he is... but we needed him to cover the winger.

about 3rd goal - i will answer you later, becouse after second goal i turn off the game:/

There's a danger of overanalysing this.You have to remember that there's a 10 point average difference between the two teams. His formation was set up to boost his goal difference and to hold it for that long was brilliant. It's easy to point out where a goal came from but you're forgetting how many times our defence worked. Last week Belguim had 23 shots against a team better than us- this week they had 9...

i forgot to say - offsides worked great.

No overanalysing. Everything i just said was fairly obvious. They had a poor formation and were there for the taking. I expect everyone to disagree because they're Belgium and have a better squad than us but i wasn't impressed with either team.

next time told us that oponent will play with 3 defs, so it will be easier to set better tactic...;p

I dont think anyone could have expected a 3-man defence but the fact is we should have been able to take advantage of it, whatever formation you went with. I said to you on Wednesday i think that you need to stretch teams to create space for Matthews if you're only playing with 1-up-front. The stats say plenty, we had 2 shots. We had 1 last week. It was a defensive formation when they left a huge ammount of space for us to work with. It was a matter of time before they broke through.
Now Shane might reference Belgiums shots last week compared to this but they wouldnt have even had 9 if we'd been in their half more. To be honest i think we would have outscored them. You put Matthews against a 3-man defence and Matthews will win, if he's given the ball enough.

yes you said.

he havent option in that game. i must set good defence, and dominate the middle. i get some stats of belgian mids before the game, and trust me - 3 def-mids in middle + of-mid was best choice.

you said me that we should play with 2 wingers - for me it was bad idea...

we had 2 shots? right, but only in stats. we had 4-5 v. good situations, but mathiews was to slow to get the ball.

that was idea for that game - play throught the middle - but Hellsangel changed tactic, and it couldnt works.

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It was a great tactic by Ireland today. I don't get how you can deny that.. With the help from the offsides (caused by a great tactic), we had a verrrrry tough game today. I don't think Ireland could have done better then this today. There's absolutely no shame in losing 3-1 after playing such a great game.

Also, I agree my tactic wasn't very nice today, but I was pleased by the three man defense. I knew you weren't going to use wingers so why bother covering them?

The stats dont lie

We lost shots 9 to 2
We lost territory 59% to 41%
We won posession but then we were in our own half.

So you played with a bad tactic, we lost 3-1, were outplayed and we should be pleased?
I'm physically incaple of being happy losing against anyone. You could have been Poland and i would still complain that we could have won that game. Aside from scoring first, i really dont see anything to be pleased about.

You've really lost me on this one. If you think tactics can overcome a 10 point difference in ratings I look forward to your winning cup run ^^

It's easy to say he should have played with 2 wingers now but that would have left the midfield overrun and we could have conceded a lot more...