COMMENT Qatar OLE’S A GONER win was not real progress
Victory more like a glorified training session than a test
OLE GUNNAR Solskjaer is living on borrowed time, with games against Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester City coming up in the league — as well as tricky back-to- back Champions League fixtures against Atalanta.
Maybe, if results continue to go the way they did on Saturday at Leicester, the penny will finally drop with the Old Trafford hierarchy and they’ll give him the boot.
Money
It has become a joke. I don’t know why or how he has held onto his job for so long.
The money spent, the players he has disposed of and the points coughed up like at Leicester, these are all sackable offences in my eyes.
Daily Star
I GOT lambasted by someone this week.
“What about us now, Rod?” “What about us?” I replied.
“We won 4- 0!”
“Against Qatar,” I said.
“Yeah, but we played brilliantly.”
Tuesday’s per formance reminded me of when I was manager of Carlisle United.
We played like that every week…on the Friday!
That was when we had our non- contact training, where we focused on shape.
We were like Real Madrid, smashing balls around the pitch, no pressure.
But then we’d go out the next day a gainst s omeone l ike Macclesfield and they’d kick lumps out of you.
That’d bring us crashing back down to earth.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could play Azerbaijan and Qatar every time we meet up for an international window?
The reality is, Qatar was a noncontest when it came to the opposition yet we still only scored one from play.
One was a ricochet, one from the penalty spot, another from a corner and then one from a through ball the quality of which Jeff Hendrick is unlikely to have ever played before.
“But is it not progress, Rod?” No!
We went to Portugal and by all accounts — well, all but mine — we should have beaten them 1- 0.
So, progress would be beating them next month, given we are at home and with a few more games under our belts. to establish themselves at club
Yet the pundits are saying we level first. shouldn’t expect anything from Somebody told me we have that game, so where’s the profound a new Robbie Keane. gress in that? Robbie was scoring goals at
As far as I’m concerned, they international level when he was can give Stephen17!Kennya 10-year contractO and a statue outside Abbotstown if he gets the team to perform like that against the top- end sides.
But to those saying he deserves a new contract after the last two games, forget about it.
I said way back when he took over that he should have been left with the Under-21s for two more years, before moving up.
Either that, or the FAI should have fully bought into his rebuilding model by handing him a four or six-year contract.
Hedging their bets has created a lot of unneces sar y uncertainty.
Damage
And the damage from that has been done, as far as I’m concerned. We have coughed up two tournaments already — and for what? To play well against Azerbaijan and Qatar?
People say we have a young team — but that’s because they are the players that the manager has picked.
There is a smashing crop of young players coming through. I acknowledge that. But they have
f the five goals Callum Robinson scored, only one was created by real movement, and that was his third against Qatar.
The rest were coming in off his left-hand side, there were two big deflections and the goalkeeper could have thrown his hat on the second one against Azerbaijan.
I respect everyone’s opinion and I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t believe we are making the kind of progress people are talking about.
We played a d ead-rubber against Azerbaijan. People say it was a World Cup qualifier, but it wasn’t really, was it? Neither team could qualify.
If we played them in the first game, when it was all to play for, then it would have been a different kettle of fish.
You have to look at the context and not just the scoreline.
I remember doing my Pro Licence and they handed out a question.
If you are playing against Team X in a European game, what way do you set your team up?
I put my hand up and asked if the game was home or away. Everyone looked at me.
Was it the first or second leg? Again, all eyes on me.
But that type of c ontext is needed before a manager can make a judgement call — and before a judgement call can be made on a manager.
With Azerbaijan and Qatar, I was reminded of those training games with Carlisle the day before we’d travel to play a real match.
Fear
Eleven reserves against our starting 11 — and the secondstringers were ordered not to attack any crosses or attempt to tackle, for fear of injuring someone that would play the next day.
And we were brilliant! We’d whack the ball around and score from a 30 or 40-pass move.
But the next day we’d struggle to string four passes together.
You are only as good as the opposition allows you to be, and if anyone tells me Qatar put up any resistance last week they must have been looking at a different game.
But if we dominate Portugal the way we did Qatar, I’ll be the first to hold my hands up and admit I was wrong and I will be glad to do so, because I just want to see Ireland winning and playing well in real games.