Wothington begins on a bum note

Having been initially positive about Nigel Worthington’s appointment as Northern Ireland boss, I was worried to read, amongst an unrepentant exegesis of his arguments for withdrawing Phil Mulyrne and Paul McVeigh from successive Northern Ireland squads, the following debilitatingly negative analysis of the current playing squad: "Without being disrespectful, this team isn't like the side that had names like McIlroy, O'Neill, Armstrong and Jennings."We have only a handful of Premiership players but they have big hearts."

Whilst the actual factuality of Worthington’s statement is hard to contest, given recent results, given the amount of confidence instilled in the team under Lawrie Sanchez, given that a new manager might be expected to try and boost, rather than destroy, the confidence of his new charges, the comment is a deeply unhelpful one.

My immediate reaction to Worthington’s appointment was certainly positive. I see the new manager’s task as maintaining a steady ship, as I have outlined below. It seemed that the IFA had made the right appointment in this regard, shunning high profile “names”.

I can only hope that this initial negativity from Worthington is not a harbinger of things to come, nor is it a return to the days of Lawrie McMenemy when every defeat was presaged by his pessimistic and derisory comments about his own playing squad.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Shia Revival

The Iranian author, Vali Nasr, has written an interesting book called The Shia Revival: How conflicts within Islam will shape the future .  Its argument is exceptionally pertinent at a time when European governments are edging toward arming Sunni extremists in Syria. Nasr portrays Shiism as the more liberal, palatable strand of Islam and a religion for underdogs.  He makes his point persuasively, although putting a progressive gloss on the regime in Iran and Hezbollah does undermine his thesis. A lot of the material is focussed on Iraq, where there is a Shia majority, which was suppressed during the presidency of Saddam Hussein.  The leading cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, is depicted as a moderating influence, who opposed retaliation as Sunni extremism threatened to cause sectarian civil war. The book’s opening chapter provides an erudite and fascinating history of factions within Islam.  The split dates back to the origins of the faith and a dispute over the prophet Mohammed’
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more