Peter McDonnell's Style of Play

[Armamike]

There seems to be a large scale disappointment in Armagh about the negativity of their football this year.

The question is, did this style of football this year stem from Peter McDonnell's management, or is it so ingrained in the longstanding core of players that he had no choice but to work within this system?

In other words, are McDonnell's teams known for negativity, or is it just the way Armagh deign to play?

Not sure.  The only other team of McDonnell's i've seen were the u21s from last year and they were fairly attack minded. In fact they nearly tended to try and walk the ball into the net at times. As Rufus suggests there could be an element of playing safe in the first year in charge as there wasn't a noticeable difference in style to the last few years. The disappointing thing is that Armagh do have players with a bit of pace who can get forward and track back as needed. McKeever and Kernan can attack from the back and Vernon and Mallon have the pace and fitness to get forward and track back.  But for some reason we didn't see enough of this.

 

[pintsofguinness]

Trust you to make a snide comment, there is no style involved when Armagh play.  Its dour, dire, crude, a struggle. I will admit that its effective, but I think thewobbler is the first man ever to manage to put those words in the same sentence. Sadly you cant really comment on Armaghs style of play, or Kerrys or even the Dubs for that matter, you dont go to any games, your life seems to revolve around Big Brother, the internet and making snide comments. You seem like a really nice person 

  It always has to get personal with you.

[Down Gael]

You simply cannot comment on Armaghs style of play, you dont go to the games. Nothing personal, just an observation. Maybe you should get out more, stop taking on-line personality tests, you need a personality to do that 

[pintsofguinness]

You simply cannot comment on Armaghs style of play, you dont go to the games. Nothing personal, just an observation. Maybe you should get out more, stop taking on-line personality tests, you need a personality to do that 

Yeah I've no life/personality etc- haven't heard that in a hour 

anyway, that's two comments you've made about McDonnell now and I didn't read your last one as just being football related so I was wondering what the issue was? 

[Aghdavoyle]

From memory, armagh played with 6 orthodox defenders against wexford. the forwards seemed to be configured with 4 of them out and out "inside the 50" as you guys like to term it with o'rourke and vernon working up and down wherever they were needed. o'rourke seems to concentrate his energies covering lads, winning ball and making tackles while vernon doesn't really seem to do either forward or back - certainly he didn't against wexford. o'rourke and vernon were marked wherever they went so that means it was 5 wexford defenders against 4 out and out armagh forwards "inside the 50". at the other end, both Kernan and McNulty followed their men to the middle (on top of the half forward who withdrew into defence), so that left 4 armagh defenders against 3 out and out wexford forwards "inside the 50".

that is the nature of every intercounty game these days. it is a question of what happens inthe middle third when you have the ball and when you haven't. for example, ytrone are more extreme defensively than armagh but they atack like men posessed whenthey win the ball back (usually by crowding opponents out).