Whatever about saipan, mick mcCarthy should be the last person we appoint.
What we need is someone who is prepared to spend his weekends watching irish players play for their clubs. Trapatonni seems to be genuinely unaware that james mcClean is the top scoring irish man in the top flight in 2012. I'm not suggesting that McClean is some sort of genius, but he's behind McGeady, Duff, Keogh, cox, Doyle, long, hunt, and even probably robbie brady for a position in the irish team. i've never seen an irish striker do what shane long did to us, which was tear our defence to pieces with his strength and sheer pace. Trap keeps fucking him around, and it's a miracle he hasn't retired. Only now whgen Whelan is injured is james mcCarthy getting a game. McCarthy may only be 21, but he's played 200 first team games, and nearly 100 premiership games. McCarthy is the only Irish player who I'd like to see sign for liverpool. Trap seems to think that 25 is dangerously young for an international footballer, and people below this age shouldnt' be trusted.
Instead of seeming to actively exclude Long, mcCarthy, McClean, Coleman from the team, even though he's perfectly happy to call them up, and sit on the bench time after time after time, until they eventually snap, or run out of form, proving him right. Even then he wasn't remotely interested in houlihan and pilkington even when norwich were doing rather well last season. He should be scouring england for players eligible to play. He should be aware of who our best players are, and we shouldn't be afraid to pick them. We're in a position where our second XI (the team that played Oman) would beat the pants off Traps first choice XI (which as far as I can make out still includes given and Duff)
The Third thing we need is a tactically aware manager who is able to organize the team, around the players he has available to him, rather than some rigid, preset tactics formulated back in the 50's that only work when you have the best players in the league, and you're also knobbling refs.
The thing is that mick kind of falls down in all of these areas. He watched plenty of matches, but I'm not sure what he saw. He was prepared to give players like duff, given and keane a chance when they were relatively very young, but these were exceptional players, and we didn't have anyone else. As time went on it was very clear that he had his own favourites who would be in the team, regardless of club form, or even international form. For instance in our 1-0 win over holland, he picked Kelly at right back instead of finnan, He picked mcAteer who was in his clubs reserve squad, and hadn't played well for ireland in a long time. He also picked Steve staunton ahead of kenny cunningham or andy O'brien, even though he was slower than a wet week. and there was no crime against defending that Ian harte couldn't commit and be kicked out of the team.
And that's before we get to Kevin Kilbane. Whatever happened Kilbane had to be in the team. Damien duff was one of the best left wingers in europe at the time, and he hardly ever played on the left for us to accommodate kilbane.
Then mick may be a very nice guy, and a decent motivator, but he's not really a great judge of player, or very good at organizing a defence. We just did well because Roy keane was so utterly dominant in the area in front of the defence, and did a lot of the organization on the pitch. oh, and he scored important goals as well. Alan Kelly and shay given played important roles as well.
We need a resource maximizing manager, who is able to find our best players, and organize them properly for the football of the 21st century. basically we need a Brian Kerr, with more gravitas and self assurance, who isn't quite so needy, and doesn't talk so much. Like a lot of 'non-footballer managers' like A V-B, and judging by Being liverpool, BR kerr just talked too much. I don't know if most footballers really need or respect that. It might work with youth footballers, but there's only so much senior internationals are prepared to listen to.
