Republic of Ireland General Discussion Thread 2026

The Ferguson thing is be a lot more nuanced than generally accepted here.

Roma do not score goals or create chances. They are a totally blunt side. Horribly overplaying the ball in midfield, the wide men are awful footballers whose ability to play overhit or hit the first man crosses is laughable. Their set pieces totally exasperate me.

If you don’t watch Roma, let’s face it most people commenting here dont, then you won’t see that.

so we get on to Ireland….

I commented here last year that Ferguson going supernova was Irelands only hope of qualifying for the World Cup. That was a way of saying we had almost no chance of qualifying. People didn’t like that but it’s being proved pretty true. Parrott has made no impact on qualifying to date. Idah is Idah, he can’t play football but an ok penalty box striker who’s got a goal. Ferguson has done his part with 3 goals in 4 games.

I’ve said over and again that Ireland have problems at fullbacks, wingers, not just midfield and that’s being shown to be the case aswell. Yet fans and media still bang the drum that if we had a class midfielder it would come together. Ireland doesn’t even produce one class midfielder a decade so hoping for one is tantamount to wishing for something.

Some of us are fanboys of Ferguson because he’s the only outfield player who has delivered the goods for Ireland in the past year: goals vs Hungary, Armenia, Bulgaria and Finland.

some of ye are fanboys of Parrott because he’s got a decent record for AZ. (If you watch AZ’s games or read their fans comment sections you’ll understand the Irish media narrative tjay Parrott is doing really well in the eredivisen isn’t really the perception in Alkmaar.

I’ll take the lad who’s doing it for Ireland.

as I say I prefer the lad who’s scoring for Ireland.

When Troy starts scoring for Ireland I’ll believe in the Troy Parrott story more. He scores for AZ and a lot of their fans are fairly nonplussed with him.

Hes unlikely to play much in November. Ferguson and Parrott are both no 9s. One is in form for Ireland and one is his backup

start digging here: https://azfanpage.nl/forum/international-f23/?sid=359631ee6c1f995db0b85143c4ed02d5

or just start an account and ask them what they think of Parrott.

Because he scores a lot of penalties and scored 4 goals in one game that they won 9-0 anyway. That’s grand but then around March April he frankly had some consistently awful games. The cup semi vs Heracles he was the worst player on the pitch and missed a peno in the shootout but they still scraped through. That could have been extremely costly as the final at the time looked very winnable. In the end they lost that. He didn’t do much vs spurs as they exited the Europa league. For all I watched I thought he looked class in only one game and that was away vs Galatasaray in the Europa league. He looked like a real defenders nightmare that night. I think that was in the middle of a bad run of form as it happens.

To know how good the average player is playing it’s no real use following Twitter etc., you have to watch the games. Twitter etc would have you believe Irish players are in good form for their clubs and Ive watched those games as much as possible and they aren’t.

There are mitigating factors:

• Parrott probably played too much last season as he only had one player to rotate with and he was a young lad who is injury prone. He was getting started Thursday Sunday, Thursday, Sunday. That could well have meant he was completely knackered.
• It wasn’t an impressive season for AZ as a whole and often individual players take the brunt of that
• This is all based on his debut season. Parrott started this season on fire and the fans had no complaints then.
  

read the last paragraph of the post directly before yours.

anyway, I’m not in the habit of lying. My comments are based on the ongoing comments over last season or particularly over the last months of last season. So it takes a bit of a trawl.

that’s one read of it. There are positive and negative reads of his time with AZ. No real positive reads of his time in the Ireland shirt compared to Ferguson unless you’re really spinning it. Hopefully 2026 brings better things.

if people want to think Parrott is that level of striker to be a starting no 9 for Ireland and can get the goals to get us to tournaments…that this is a likely future for Parrott ….then I just see it differently.

Ferguson is that level of player potentially. If for whatever reason his career hits the rocks then maybe Parrott becomes a better option at no 9…..but if Ferguson fails, Parrott is still not going to develop into that level of player that can get Ireland to tournaments. He’s short of that level.

Think HH will prefer the extra body in midfield than playing two strikers and others playing centrally who'll offer more on the counter attack. Even recently it was 3atb and we've saw Ebosele and Ogbene start centrally against Portugal with Azaz and Ebosele against Armenia.

maybe but I wouldn’t be of a mind to think that’s a good idea for 3 reasons

• If we had 2 really exceptional no 9s then I think I would be ok with the idea. But we have two ok to good no 9s. Don’t see it a must to have Parrott in the team.
• Having Parrott there takes out a player who can provide what Ferguson really needs: crosses. I think having Brady or anyone who is a good crosser in the team is far more key than having parrott there to play off Ferguson.
• Has a bang of when we had Doherty and Coleman, two good premier league right backs / wingers. We should have just played Coleman and benched Doherty, the attempts to play both were a waste of time.

I more just see Ireland scoring from crosses and set pieces

Wouldn't mind Parrott/Szmodics pushed up near Ferguson instead of Azaz.

Keith Andrew’s success at Brentford makes me think it really is just that our players that stink rather than it being down to our manager

Just the two goals for Parrott after 37 mins for AZ.

Ferguson and Ebsoele both unused substitutes for their respective clubs.