Scraping a win against one of the worst teams in europe is not "getting results". It's scraping the bare minimum possible because the other team are over 120 places beneath us in the fifa rankings and have only ever won two home games. were you saying the same thing when we beat san marino with a goal in the fourth minute of injury time?
It's desperately miserable shite to watch, and I don't care what giovanni trapattoni has won in the past. His only tactic for any situation seems to be Big man/little man rigid 4-4-2 in three solid lines so we have to hoof the ball long. Part of the reason that we must be paying him so much is that such a manager is rare nowadays.
Our four best players in the premiership at the moment are Long, McClean, mcCarthy and Gibson. One of those begrudgingly made the team last night, the striker was one of three strikers played on the wing, while the winger sat on the bench. The other midfielder (and everton haven't lost a league game he played) has just pissed off because of the way that he was treated.
Trap doesn't realise he is dealing with only limited resources. He can't keep burning his bridges with so many players. He can't keep dragging them all over the world to Ireland squad call ups, and then for them never to play a game. You can't just stick to the same XI and the same formation particularly when things go really badly it must drive the rest of the squad crazy.
The major part of the reason that gibson simply gave up was because he was dragged over to poland and the Ukraine, and even the humiliation of the starting two midfielders in their totally unsuitable formation wasn't enough to get him on the pitch. Instead the clubless Paul Green, who wasn't even in the original squad played ahead of him.
Robbie Keane has scored one goal from open play in his last 13 appearances for ireland (against estonia away) yet he is always in our team, even though he can barely move, and doesn't contribute at all from open play. Trap keeps referring to him being like totti. Which leads me to suspect that he's gone completely insane.
The truth be told, we made an absolute meal of qualification the last time out, and us making it was down to the weakness of the group we were drawn in. We didn't beat slovakia, we miraculously got one point off russia and we kept getting overrun in midfield by even the weakest teams in the group. sure we bumbled to a bunch of one goal victories, and drew a bunch of other games, but jesus christ we are completely unwatchable. We managed to scrape through thanks to amazing individual performances by Richie Dunne, and Shay given, but look what happened to us when we couldn't rely on them to bail us out at the european championships.
The only two games I've been to under trap have been the home legs of the two playoffs, and on both occasions I was given a ticket. I used to go to all the games under Kerr and Mccarthy, Even friendlies. and it's only partially due to how expensive tickets have become, and how there's less cash floating around. He may have been the perfect manager to take over after steve staunton, but that was a long time ago, and it didn't take him long to teach us his basket of tricks. Now we're paying him so much money, it would bankrupt the FAI to pay him off. The FAI is now the the back pocket of Denis "silvio" o'brien, and John Delaney is still earning more than barrack Obama.
It looks like we're stuck with him until either the end of these qualifiers, or if he gets sick in the mean time. But already the mood is turning very ugly, and we're starting to see a lot of the serious anger that accompanied the end of Mick McCarthy's reign. The switzerland game at home in 2002 is about as angry as I've seen a football crowd, and It takes a hell of a lot for the Irish fans to boo the team and the manager off the pitch, but I could see it happening if we get stuffed by Germany.
