Tuesday 27 March 2007

FA Farce & Ireland Feelings

Hi All,
Mark here. I came across this last night:

"The FA has reduced AFC Wimbledon's 18-point penalty for fielding Jermaine Darlington without international clearance to a rather more reasonable three."

Is this ridculous or what? Why did they give them a massive ban if they are just gonna reduce it to 3? After all they are their own judge and jury. As I've said before on the podcast, expect West Ham to get off lightly for their breaking of the rules by fielding Handsome Tevez and The Monster Masch.

On a different topic - has anyone great expectations for the Ireland game tomorrow, as a sequel to Saturday, I feel the contrast will be more Big Momma's House 2 vs the original. In other words, if you thought Saturday was ridiculously boring and rubbish, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. I was offered a ticket to the game tomorrow, I politely declined by laughing in my friend's face - so you can say I'm not a real fan all you want but I'm sick of paying 30-40 euro to watch Ireland - I've better things to spend my money on, such as alcohol to numb the pain of watching them.

On a related point - it was commented by certain sections of the English media (notably the Times podcast) that we in Ireland expect too much from our football, poor little oul Ireland, we don't have the players, and that it's the media who are lumping pressure on Stan. I think, and a straw poll of football fans in Ireland would prove this - we're not expecting Ireland to beat Brazil or anything, we knew before the qualifying started that we wouldn't be top 2, but to suggest that we shouldn't be beating (and, not least, performing well i.e. passing the football to each other) Wales, Cyprus and San Marino, with 10-11 Premiership players in the first team is absolutely risable.

Mark

4 comments:

Unknown said...

My only hope when the group was announced was that The Czechs and Slovaks might knock several shades of shite out eachother and we might sneak into second place after some points deductions... At this stage we expect shit when Ireland play and we get shit- whats the big deal??

Unknown said...

This crap about ireland expecting too much is ridiculous. We have a squad with plenty of premiership experience and there will be plenty of sides in the euros next year with inferior players to us. Actually i can't wait for the internationals to be over, sick of sounding like a broken fuckin record. Stan out, England shite, and I still don't care about Norn Iron. We've learned nothing new from these games - and i say that before wednesday in full confidence nothing will be learned - and instead got stays of execution for ireland and england managers. Bring on the champions league.

Anonymous said...

Good stuff JJ.
Schuly, the big deal for me is that our strongest team, on paper, is full of good players, they're just not being managed correctly.
And, I have no problem with teams being shit, just that when then look like they are trying, I don't mind it.

Unknown said...

I'd agree with both points, but until the group is over, lets face it, we're going to see plenty more shit football. If somehow then someone can persuade Guus Hiddink to sort it out I would expect much more from this team. But for the moment, it's hope, not expectation.