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Most of them defend thugball. No sympathy whatsoever.Originally Posted by Vimto
I spare a thought for the ordinary good people of Ireland who do what all of us do - optimistically and enthusiastically support their country, but Martin O'Neil? ..
They respond to the elbows against Williams and Allen in the first game with "Taylor's tackle"... completely missing the point that a bad tackle is a bad tackle, an elbow is premeditated assault...
Maybe, but still, likely "they" are no different to how the fans of any country/team tend to view things.
But anyway ..I'll not lose sleep ;)
Didn't watch the game.... but now I want to
I did, it was frigging brillDidn't watch the game.... but now I want to
Taylor's tackle was a shocker though and he was recently red carded playing for Villa after another one. Taylor's displays since the Euros in a red shirt are a microcosm of the decline in some Welsh players in the last year and a half. Someone mentioned him, Ledley and King as examples of players who are not as effective in a Welsh shirt as they once were on my blog and, as it turned out, they were the three players I had in mind when I talked about how some of our players were not that old in years, but were well into the veteran stage in terms of the international football mileage they'd clocked up.
Throw in that decline with how average, by their standards, Bale and Ramsey were for too much of the qualifying campaign and we have Wales being nowhere near as good as they were in the Euros in a group which I thought was tougher than some in this thread portray it as being.
Before the Play Offs began, I spoke of the teams from both Northern and Southern Ireland being boring and how I hoped they'd both lose, but I ended up supporting Northern Ireland against Switzerland because in the second leg they played with a spirit, resilience and skill that Wales have lacked in the past year and a half - I don't think we could have dominated the Swiss on their own patch like the very impressive Michael O'Neill's side did in the last half an hour on Sunday.
As for the Republic, apparently Martin O'Neill bristled at suggestions that his luck had finally run out after their thrashing (a result that I certainly did not see coming) against Denmark, but I believe that to be true - the Republic are pretty good when they have something to defend normally, which is why I thought they had done the hard part when they were able to take an early lead last night. However, Denmark really laid their limitations bare in the same manner as the Republic did to us when they came here needing to win and managed it fairly comfortably - Ireland's embarrassing failure really puts where we stand currently into perspective.
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