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Great quote from the greatest manager in the World

Following his tactical masterclass against Wales, Martin O'Neill is asked about potential play-off opponents:

"I have always feared teams, it's the best way to be. And then we go out and beat them."

Comments

  • great display last night - interesting to hear from Craig Bellamy on his management style which is not doing an awful lot but knows his players and what they can bring.

  • Like the sainted Brian under whom he learned his trade...and probably to avoid the free booze.

  • ....to avoid the free booze? Where? And in what circumstances?
    Perennially puzzled, High Wycombe.

  • @micra I was assuming MON learned both his football philosophy and the need to avoid the sauce from Old Big Head.

  • Not sure that OBH was very successful in avoiding it. Nor did he give the impression of fearing the opposition unduly. I could well be wrong on both counts.

  • @micra I'm obviously not making sense today...what I meant was I assume anyone who saw how the Great Man ended up would learn to avoid the booze...also OBH view of tactics was buy the right players for the right positions and let them get on with it. I think his only advice with regard to the opposition was who the centre backs were to kick up the arse. (Not applicable to International Football of course, but quite hands off.)

  • Support has been proved to be irrelevant in the performance of a football team. Martin O'Neill is the greatest manager in the World

  • How else could we have beaten the best team in Bucks.

  • @StrongestTeam wasn't meant to be a cheap shot. Just what Martin might have gleaned from his time under OBH and afterwards. I have nothing but praise for Sir Brian as someone who watched them bring the European Cup home as a small one and he put my city on the map, but in my defence I present - '"Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes” and if you read anything by his former players you'll know he was never ever present on the the training pitch and was losing the plot a bit post Peter Taylor and the FA Cup Final.

  • I wrote some words of appreciation on Martin O'Neill for yesterday's match day programme:

    https://philcatchpole.com/2017/10/15/martin-martin-give-us-a-wave/

  • Nice work Phil.

    'has anyone else contemplated what it would be like to have Martin O’Neill as manager of England?'

    Only every single day since 1995! He should have been appointed when McLaren got the job. I fear the time has passed now but can still dream.

  • I recall St Martin being offered the England job, but told he couldn’t bring in his own back room team so he turned them down. Can’t temember where I heard this though.

  • Ah, a tiny bit of googling reveals it wasn’t offered.

  • @drcongo, not long after he had been interviewed for the job by the FA, I remember St Martin, when he was a pundit for a TV game, implying to a visibly surprised fellow pundit Shearer that any offer of the England job would be on the condition that Shearer was his assistant.

    I did once ask St Martin, when manager here, if he wanted to be England manager one day and he replied, without hesitation, that he would love to be. Martin was a man for the big games, as we know so well, and I'm pretty certain he would have won some of those knock-out games at Finals. Of course the 'blazers' at the FA had other priorities over simple match winning.

  • Thanks @Steve_Peart, pretty sure that’s where I got it from too.

  • The ultimate poisoned chalice of a job. The pool of talent and how much people care about internationals seems to reduce year by year.

    Probably no bad thing for O Neill himself. His reputation is still pretty decent, whereas McClaren's plummeted afterwards.

    Instead he's taken Ireland to the finals, already exceeding expectations to get there, so an absolutely no lose in the summer. If he had this England side, the hype would be the usual ridiculous level, and there would be no win

  • Ireland have not qualified for the finals

  • St Martin excels at taking a bunch of half-arsed, middling players and turning them into a force to be reckoned with. On the one hand, he's perfect for England because that's exactly what the England team is made up of. On the other hand though, most of those players think they're way way better than they actually are because the Murdoch Media Marketing Machine is constantly telling them that they're the best players in the world in the best league in the world. When he had a load of shit players who thought they were great (Sunderland) he didn't perform quite so well, though I have no doubt that given a couple more years he could have over-achieved there too.

  • @LX1 1, good point, slightly premature!

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