New thread as the last thread seems to be broken.
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.
Its kinda been hard for Parrott to make impact when he was injured.......
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.
Oh ya and im just stating that his injury would prevent him for playing.
He played well in March game. If he brings club form to November's games it would be most welcome.
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
Where can we read this?
start digging here: https://azfanpage.nl/forum/international-f23/?sid=359631ee6c1f995db0b85143c4ed02d5
or just start an account and ask them what they think of Parrott.
I'm confused; if he's banging in the goals, why would he be unpopular?
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:
There's a forum on there designated for each player and from a quick read over the last month it seems their fans missed Parrott and are only too happy to have him back.
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.
Sounds great for us that they've gone from apparantly being nonplussed with him last year, to being very happy with him now so. Exactly the sort of trend you'd like to see. Though probably not too surprising since he's scored in 8 of his 10 appearances this season so far (with a pretty deadly 11 goals and 2 assists in those 10 appearances - a goal every 55 minutes!)
<edit>
He's also a very strange statistical anomaly in the Ireland team - in all his appearances, he has a 50% win rate! No-one else even comes close. 16 wins, 9 defeats, 7 draws. And of the 16 games he started, we've lost just 4. Mad. Now, obviously a lot of that is correlation rather than causation, but he's such a massive outlier that it does suggest we play better with him in the side (which does tend to match the eye test too).
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.
I added an extra paragraph to my previous post in a wee edit with a bit of a positive read on his ireland time :p
He's also a very strange statistical anomaly in the Ireland team - in all his appearances, he has a 50% win rate! No-one else even comes close. 16 wins, 9 defeats, 7 draws. And of the 16 games he started, we've lost just 4. Mad. Now, obviously a lot of that is correlation rather than causation, but he's
such
a massive outlier that it does suggest we play better with him in the side (which does tend to match the eye test too).
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.
With both fully fit, I can't see why we couldn't start Parrot and Ferguson.
It's not like we have a system or formation so tightly tuned that we can only accommodate one number 9.
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 not HH's style, but I'd definitely be playing the two of 'em together. I always much prefer us with two up… the best we've looked in the past 6 or 7 years was with Parrott and Obafemi up top. Ferguson is really struggling to get into decent positions (for both club and country) when stuck playing as that lone target man, and I think having a strike partner playing with him would do him the world of good.
We seem to have gone back to a back 5 nowadays anyway, so would rather Manning LWB, and Ebosele or Ogbene RWB, and a three man midfield with Azaz at the tip of it. Then the two lads up in front of them.
maybe but I wouldn’t be of a mind to think that’s a good idea for 3 reasons
I just prefer Ferguson as a ball striker. He's a big lad and good enough under crosses, but for me he's at his best anywhere around the edge of the box, facing goal, ball at his feet. And I just fancy him getting into those positions more often if he's playing with someone else who can also take the ball back to goal and lay it off for him, or play a little one-two with to release him. I think we just see him way too isolated when he's on his own, struggling to get much of his own offence going.
(I'd also be totally fine with Brady at LWB for crosses too, if he's fit)
I more just see Ireland scoring from crosses and set pieces
Set pieces for sure, particularly when we can get the other big lads from the back up there too. I think Ferguson's just a bit wasted under a rake of lumped crosses when he's on his own up there though. He's always been so much better with the ball at his feet. In his breakout with Brighton before his injury, he scored 16 goals. Only 1 was a header.
Wouldn't mind Parrott/Szmodics pushed up near Ferguson instead of Azaz.
My fellow Artane homeboy wins again with Brentford. Keef seems to be a class act.
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
That's the end of that then
Andrews was just the assistant though. The job of the assistant is to support the manager in what they want to do, and try to help them achieve their plan, not dictate plans of their own. We see plenty of assistants perform very differently when given a managerial job themselves - Kieran McKenna another obvious one.
Good for him. Glad he came out and made a decisive and very unequivocal statement like that. I have zero problem with players born outside the 32 counties playing for Ireland but only as long as they genuinely want to play for Ireland and see themselves as Irish.
Just the two goals for Parrott after 37 mins for AZ.
Ferguson and Ebsoele both unused substitutes for their respective clubs.
Five subs used by Roma and still no Evan. It's looking like a short lived romance, I can see him gone in January.
Troy definitely the inform player and has to be starting for Ireland.
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