We are becoming glorious losers
RESULTS ALWAYS OUTWEIGH ANY TALK OF IMPROVEMENT
Farrugia and Gaffney combined again in the 52nd minute, the latter’s low shot finding the side-netting.
A Burke effort was saved by Moore and, moments later, the striker had an effort ruled out for offside.
Gaffney, Byrne then combined to set up Farrugia, who was also denied by Moore. Daniel Cleary had a go, Gaffney had another shot saved.
UCD broke out and Duffy’s sweetly-struck 63rd-minute shot from the edge of the box was kept out by Mannus, who tipped it over.
Byrne came close in the 85th minute from 20 yards for Rovers. But there was still time for Duffy to get two more efforts in, the second just missing the post.
PEOPLE are talking about an improvement in Ireland’s performances and of course you need that.
But if there wasn’t any after this length of time, there would be serious questions to answer.
I have never seen so much fanfare around defeats.
We had great passages of play. Wow.
Young Troy Parrott (inset) missed a glorious opportunity. Amazing.
That happens in every single game. We are turning into politicians, spinning defeats into something they are not.
And fans are buying it because they don’t know the game inside out — and I mean that with no disrespect.
I want to know why people aren’t asking about the substitutions.
Or the conversation in the dressing room at half-time.
We were 1-0 up at Hampden Park, Scotland were booed off the pitch.
So, tactically what was the message in the break?
To pull the wing-backs in? To sit in the middle of the park, weather the inevitable storm and catch them on the break? As for the subs, I want to know why Michael Obafemi was taken off.
People say he was tired, but that’s a load of crap.
He has hardly played this season and it’s only September anyway.
He was doing particularly well and his pace was clearly causing lots of problems for the Scots.
Goals
We need to start winning games because we are becoming glorious losers.
I remember in the Portugal game, when we lost to two late Cristiano Ronaldo goals. Fans stayed around for 45 minutes afterwards, singing.
It’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen.
We have a manager who is blooding young players.
This is the excuse and it’s a good excuse, but we need to be winning games too.
The FAI can see the fans are onside, they are backing Stephen Kenny to the hilt, so the blazers will say everything is grand.
But when do you stick or twist? It’s all about numbers.
For a striker, it’s how many goals you score, for a goalkeeper it’s clean sheets. And for a manager, it’s all about wins.
This is not personal. I don’t care about personalities or egos, I just want to see the coalface numbers.
I’ve been sacked enough times for producing great performances, but not winning. I couldn’t complain.
When I was Derry City manager, our best performance was in the game before I got sacked against Shamrock Rovers.
There were around five youngsters in the team and I could see big futures for them.
But we didn’t get the result and I got sacked.
I’m not looking for anyone to lose their job, but I don’t want people buying into a narrative that things are improving.
Measure
The only measure of improvement in football is victories.
We went into the Nations League with talk of topping the group, but tonight we are one game away from relegation.
So I don’t want to hear about great passages of play, or if we took this or that chance we might have won.
We need results.
Then we can start talking about improvements.
But if those results don’t come, then we will be nothing more than glorious losers.