Giving us Kieffer Moore? You're deluded, he's tapped up more players than you'd believe, Andy Ritchie will vouch, McCarthy is a Leeds fan, as stated on Soccer Am, speaks well of us cos it suits his purpose, he'd shaft us if it helps him at Cardiff, dont like him at all.
Bit gutted for them. As people on here will know, the people of Ireland treated me and my family extremely well. I like to see them do well.
You're underestimating Luxembourg and overestimating Ireland. Luxembourg have come on a lot the last few years, a lot of respectable results. Their striker has 6 goals in 11 in the Turkish league this year. Connor Hourihane at Barnsley must be the last Irish player to score 6 in a season. There are zero goals in the team, so when we concede we lose.
Hardly did anything for us in the time he played? Really? One of the best central defenders we've had
Maybe I’m under estimating Luxembourg but I said Ireland’s pool of players are terrible & the worst in my lifetime. They should still be beating Luxembourg at home comfortably. I don’t believe a Mick McCarthy managed Ireland ever lose to Luxembourg for example. There’s still plenty of decent championship players in there.
Barnsley fc fans player of the year 3 years out of 4 - 1978 1979 1981 But did nowt for us, aye oreyt!
I'll tell you why he's a Barnsley legend. He played 272 games for us over six years. He was the backbone of a team that took us out of the doldrums of the 4th division. Then did the same in the 3rd division and almost did the same in the 2nd. He was an essential part of one of, if not the best, Barnsley teams ever to grace Oakwell. He then left and did his job with integrity as plsyer and manager wherever he went. He didn't try to do us down, he just did his job. You're quite entitled not to like him, strange though that is, but in a world where legend is a word demeaned by overuse he actually is one at this club.
A Mick McCarthy managed Ireland struggled to a 1-0 over Gibralter, in a match where Gibralter were the best team for long periods. Drew with Georgia and lost 4-1 to Wales. Mick is loved in Ireland, but his last spell in charge was deeply unpopular. It's one thing being terrible, but another to be terrible with boring predictable selections of players who have shown time and again that they aren't up to it and negative tactics. He gave the country nothing to cling on to and get behind. Ireland need a complete overhaul. The FAI have been atrociously mismanaged for decades and there is no clear pathway for youth players to develop other than to go to England. This option has never really worked out for Irish players leaving home and what they know at 13. It's notable that a large number of our better senior players never got signed by English sides as teenagers and weren't deemed good enough. Their more talented compatriots who got all the offers and made the move across the channel have largely fallen by the wayside. There is hope in that the League of Ireland teams have now bern forced to run underage programmes, so having a national league at u18 and u16 level is a new development. Also the English academies have cone on in leaps and bounds in the last 5-10 years, the individual is now being looked after and educated which produces people like Marcus Rashford and players comfortable moving abroad and excelling in foreign surroundings instead of the neanderthals of the past who the academies failed to educate. Sadly for Ireland there will be results like this until a better crop of players come through. But we need a manager who will start the youngsters and try to play progressive football. That manager isn't Mick.
Mick tends to get jobs where the players aren’t good enough to play good football. If Ireland had players who could play easy on the eye football I don’t believe he would’ve have got the job in the first place. Have the players shown they aren’t up to it? Or have they done as well as can be expected? I’d say getting to the play offs with that crop of players is about the best Ireland could hope for at the minute. I completely agree with you about the overhaul. It’s a mess & no ones coming through but at first team level I’d suggest they need a manager like Mick to try & keep their rankings relatively high whilst getting on with the important job of bringing through some young talents through the age groups. I just think if they persist in trying to play this kind of football they’ll keep on having these embarrassing results & then when Ireland’s a fourth or fifth seed in the qualifying pots it’s hard to progress because you keep getting tougher groups
Interesting comments in this thread. Terrible result for Ireland but just to add: - Luxembourg are far better than people are giving them credit for. Really grown recently and this was being billed as a difficult game all week - Ireland didn’t ditch Big Mick. His contract was until after the Euros and as they didn’t happen they brought Kelly (?) in early. No sacking or kicking out.
You couldn't be more wrong Mick is an old friend of mine, we grew up together in Worsbrough, he's Barnsley through and through, played his heart out every game for us and just to put the record straight he's a top lad as well, your information is so far out of whack with the truth its mind boggling.
I watched Ireland play Gibraltar a while back, his first game back in charge I think. They were absolutely dreadful. The talent pool available at the moment is just not good enough. There's a lot of people like and play football here but the organisation from the top is woeful. There's no pyramid as such so good local footballers can never progress and I suspect the levels of coaching are in general not up to much. Red Rob and LangerDan could probably give more informed views than me though. Mick wasn't sacked, you're right. There were a lot of fans waiting for him to get out of the door though and expecting a football revolution under Kenny. Not sure how good a manager he is at international level but, at the moment, he doesn't have the tools to do the job and I'd imagine Mick's pragmatism would be better in the short term.
They ought to revert back to Jack Charlton’s eligibility method. Back in 1988 Euros he had Ray Houghton in midfield, born in Glasgow, raised in London. But as Jack put it, “If his parents once owned an Irish Setter, he qualifies”. And Houghton was one of several with very ‘tame’ Irish links.
if my memory serves me correctly Tony Cascarino played for Ireland on the basis of an Irish grandmother who later turned out not to be Irish at all. And on another point, Mick McCarthy was absolutely superb as a centre half with Barnsley. The spine of that Reds team was of the highest quality and first division standard. He made a massive contribution to the club, even beyond that of more recent icons like Conor and Alex.
In what way does him speaking well for us patronisingly (according to you) suit any of his purposes ? Allan Clarke then Norman Hunter built promotion sides around Mick and big clubs were always enquiring about his availability . You’re either after a wind up or you know nothing about Mick McCarthy and those of us that watched/Knew him .