A lot of the blog is below. If you want to read the rest, hopefully the url works.
https://veryintobloggingveryintonewmedia.wordpress.com/2024/10/10/tis-all-on-you-evan/
Can I shock you? The best chance Ireland have of making serious progress for the rest of 2024 or 2025 rests on Evan Ferguson becoming a near world conquering talent.
A little too dramatic perhaps. I think I know what you are thinking; some deluded gobshite overhyping Evan Ferguson instead of just allowing the young man time to establish himself again at Brighton after a difficult few months. Well bear with me because that isn't really my point.
My question, just to re-emphasise is how do Ireland get good quickly?
The other possibilities for this to happen apart from the one in the intro are
1- Heimar Hallgrimsson is one of the best coaches/managers in the world and no one knows this yet. Probably not even him.
2- Ireland have much better players than their world ranking and their performances since the start of Stephen Kenny's reign indicates.
And possibility no.3 is Evan Ferguson goes supernova.
So lets look at the likelihood of those three happening. Briefly in the case of possibility number 1 and in-depth on possibility no.2.
Heimar Hallgrimsson is a black box appointment. This is not unusual in modern day football. Arne Slot, Erik Ten Haag, Oliver Glasner, Fabian Hürzeler to name just a small few were all black box appointments. Edin Terzic could have won the Champions league with Dortmund had they been clinical in the final and would still be black box appointment for any club now. They replaced him with another black box appointment in Nuri Sahin. If England appoint Lee Carsley as their full time manager this year he will be a black box appointment. The manager (Lionel Scaloni) of the World Cup winners was a complete Hail Mary black box appointment. The amount of black box appointments may even outnumber the amount of known entity appointments like Klopp, Conte, Ancelotti, Pep, Tuchel, Deschamps, Lampard, Brendan Rodgers, Sam Allardyce or Mourinho were for better or worst you know what you're getting largely when the the appointment is made.
The chances that Hallgrimsson is one of those black boxes that is so amazing that he can inspire this selection of players to incredible and incredulous improvement look remote and it kind of pointless to speculate further on it so we shall move on.
So lets move on to the next meatier possibility: the players have been underperforming and are going to show a level of improvement that will be almost impossible to fathom under Hallgrimsson.
I believe that currently the combined skill set of the squad is possibly the weakest squad Ireland has has in its history, with the proviso that players in 2024 are far fitter, train and eat better than previous generations so I mean in comparison to their footballing contemporaries.
Let's break things down to their basics; What are the absolute key attributes in each outfield football position? *We'll assume that players have to stay in their position relative to the ball as too basic to even mention everytime.*
Full Backs: Be solid in defence, provide an overlap option to the winger.
Centre Halves: be strong and disciplined in the air and ground
Midfield: Provide control, track midfield runners, press, pass sideways and forwards, only backwards when unavoidable.
Wingers: attack on the front foot, defend on the back foot
Strikers: Link Play, shoot on target, don't be dominated.
My intention now is to compare the players we have in those positions to their ability to meet those basics.
Centre halves: Nathan Collins, Dara O'Shea, Omobamidele, Liam Scales, Mark McGuinness.
To be honest, all the players can likely meet the basic requirements I've put forward as being necessary for a centre half. I might harbour doubts about all of them when exposed one on one with skilful attackers but for the basic job they all pass.
Full backs: Robbie Brady, Liam Scales, Andrew Omobamidele, Festy Ebosele,
This is where the major problems start. Firstly, numbers are light. Secondly there isn't a single career full back amongst the numbers. Thirdly, arguably none of them pass my criteria for the basics of full back play.
https://veryintobloggingveryintonewmedia.wordpress.com/2024/10/10/tis-all-on-you-evan/
Your some craic.