Glen Whelan given extended break by Stoke!

Guarantee on friday when trap names his squad that Whelan, Hunt and McShane etc will all be in there.

And Green.

Have to agree with Henrik and Godfather! Experience has shown that Trapatonni will almost deliberately go against the wishes of the media and Irish fans! We will probably see McClean and Mc Carthy get on for the last 30 minutes against Serbia. Expect to see the same starting 11 as we saw during the Euro's!

To be fair DAVE, I think you're being a bit hard on Whelan. I agree he didnt perform, but anyone could see that the lad played his heart out and gave his all for his country! He just wasnt good enough! Thats not his fault. He was rightly proud to have been selected for his country and he did his best! What do you expect him to do?-- Refuse his cap! No the fault lies elsewhere. Selection is the responsibility of the manager! Trapp has made some strange decisions regarding selection and tactics. Time for him to explain himself!

The Republic's performance wasnt as bad as people are making out. They were beaten 4-0 by the eventual winners and by general agreement the best team by some distance in the competition and in the World, They were beaten 2-0 by the runners up who were in significantly better form that they were in the final! They lost 3-1 to Croatia who just might have been the 3rd best team in the competition.

Lets have a bit of objectivity please! OK, ROI underperformed and did not fulfill expectations, lets leave it at that. All this talk of being, "The worst team at the Euros", is unproven, unhelpful and uneccessary!

"Listen while I tell the hard luck story
Bout a man called Jack McDuff(or Whelan/Ward/Andrews)
He believed in the God and the glory
But HE JUST WASNT TOUGH ENOUGH!"

"The Freedom Song"; Thin Lizzy

I'm not blaming Whelan at all Reiver. Look I hate having to criticise players like him who play their heart out for their country but the facts are he is a liability to our side! Ok if we had no one else to select instead of him you can't really complain! BUT we do and some of these players were left on the bench or at home while a dog with a mallet up his h0le could see that Whelan was out of his depth for all 3 of our matches at the Euro Finals!!

DAVE:
Agreed, but it was Trapp's fault for selecting him and the others. Trapp is beginning to remind me of Worthington more, day by day.

Ha ha! Actually Worthington used remind me of Staunton!

About time we Irish had some decent managers again!