Greatest League in the World 2025 [LOI Thread]

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LOI clubs should probably stop signing Faroe Islands internationals on big money contracts and expecting them to be good. They're one of the worst international sides in the world and their players show it. There's been a few of them in the league in the last few years and I can't remember any of them being decent. I can only imagine there's an agent in Torshaven living a life of luxury on the back of flogging these duds to LOI clubs.

Russell is learning from his mistakes. The 2 big ones for me were 1. stopping this endless passing around the back 5 and getting nowhere, he stuck with that for well over a season, and 2. stopping signing these foreign internationals.

Russell seemed to think international caps equals a higher standard of player, and for us it simply didn't work. Personality, drive, commitment etc are all so important.

We had so many duds of which Radosavljevic is the only 1 left because of the stupid 2 year contract as you say. Some others that come to mind was Frank Livak who was ok, and that Melvin lad who was genuinely afraid of the ball. Pedro Martello another embarrassment with his feigning injury who was not an international, and a terrible, terrible finisher.

It also seems to me that the non-native English speaking lads didn't gel with the squad. Fabrice Hartmann from Germany seemed to have good English and he was definitely a good signing overall. And we had that Dutch guy who only stayed for a few games but Dutch people in general have great English and come from similar culture, climate, physical league, though we didn't see enough to make a call on how good he was.

Pijnaker and Max Mata from NZ were successes, we had another Kiwi a few seasons back who was ok, a brick sh!thouse of a forward whose name escapes me. Twardek from Canada did well for us, Jordan Hamilton was a disaster, but there is a higher hit rate from native English speaking countries.

But it seems he realised that getting Irish and British lads is the lower risk, more squad togetherness, fewer unknowns. Pearce and Henry-Francis are decent loan signings right now, so I think that will be the way forward for us now.

Radosavljevic will be the final remnants of that policy disaster gone. Hold on to as many of our best players as we can, add more young, hungry lads on loan and we could be in a good position for next season.

In game 1 this season we outplayed Bohs in Dublin, conceded an equaliser very late on, I watched on LOITV and Bohs started bringing on some internationals and I thought to myself "Hmm, have they paid attention to what happened to us?".

Sure are. But it's less risk, as you know more about them. Many would have played in the league before.

"You kind of have higher expectations of lads with exotic names for some reason." That's pretty much my point. You have a foreign international, often on huge wages for the club, you think well this guy must be good, and they often under perform. I didn't mention Bogdan Vastuk earlier, he was another example for Sligo, on very big wages I believe, a total disaster.

It seems to have failed often enough for Russell/Sligo Rovers that they have abandoned it.

I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule as regards imports and where they come from. It’s more down to doing your homework properly on players that you bring in. I’m sure we’ve all had successes and failures with imports. Sligo have always seemed to me to rely more heavily on imports than most teams. Whether that’s down to difficulties getting Irish lads to move west I don’t know. Dublin clubs have a huge advantage in this regard of course.

More money taken out than put in apparently. We're doomed.

Still Rovers

And yes we had to work hard Friday

"Where Did All the Money Go (A Financial History of the LOI), in all good bookstores"

It would make for a very repetitive book: club hires manager who puts a decent team together, club finds success and makes some money, players demand a large slice of the newfound wealth, club agrees and "winning forever" becomes the new funding model, nobody brave enough to say "**** yous, we're building a terrace instead", club slides but wages don't, club goes under and head of the mercenaries' union shows up to say "how could this happen?". Rinse and repeat.

If Pats beat or draw with Derry and assuming Shels win then Derry are out of the running. How much motivation will they then have for the Shels game with the cup final coming up.

On the basis they could be overtaken & miss out on europe altogether I'd be very surprised if they rolled over for Shels on the final day irrelevant of whether they can win the league or not.

If I was Higgins I wouldn't like to be going into the cup final needing a win to make europe. They may be favourites, but Drogs could easily spring a surprise on the day.

Check our results v Drogs this season, that'll tell you all you need to know about the cup final. It's an even game.