₦airaland Forum

Goke7:
with the those foul throws? haba

Mujtahida:
Hahahaha hahahaha. You don't proof a suspicion. You proof a fact. You sabi

Mujtahida:
Just an aside:
Please where's the pun in what you said? I get confused when people say no pun intended and somehow (now this is the right time to say no pun intended cos I'm making a word play put of your moniker) I read and don't find even the faintest hint of a pun and I'm like wtf. I guess you don't know what a pun is.

Kog45:
Sir am not really impress with Joel Obi though i don't have any high expectation on him cos i watched him closely this season and i said it here that Joel of today is not the same Joel of Inter,funny enough some even rate him than Mikel.

kennysville:
Actually, I believe in an all out attack. If we will be very honest with ourselves, 3-5-2 has been the formation that brought out the best in all of our players especially the players who shone like a million stars. This formation is highly effective and productive. In it, we got to see smooth and swift counter attacks and overall, the team was a beauty to watch. Playing lone strikers in front requires a skill set called smooth ball distribution which i find lacking each time mikel is not on the pitch.
Hence the call for Rohr to start looking at getting a replacement for Mikel. Iwobi is a natural replacement for me. And this simply means that once he is being drafted to the creative midfield position, an equally cerebral player is needed to take his place on the left. The player best suited to take Iwobi's position on the left in my opinion is Onyekuru( thats probably after Mikel must have been subbed)

My worries right now is central midfield and the attack lines. Playing Ighalo as a lone striker with no one to supply the right timeous passes is plain useless and this is what makes him look like he is useless upfront. If this isnt sorted out before the next friendly, I can promise you that we will only be playing 1 nil wins or 2nil loss with no clear cut direction.

Goke7:
we've seen aina in two games and he was not impressive, For Rohr to admit that Echiejile is still in competition, it says a lot that the LB is still not sorted despite the all the names that have been called.

we seem to forget that aina, idowu and ebuehi are still very young players that if not the lack in depth we have in the squad, they stand no chance in our senior side, that's how bad things are currently

Goke7:
a C is not good enough at all for a player of that calibre and after all the noise especially with few days left to the world cup

TheSuperNerd:
Nigeria 0-2 Serbia: Hot talking points

Gernot Rohr suffered only his second loss in 14 matches as Super Eagles coach when Nigeria went down 2-0 to Serbia in London on Tuesday.

Beyond the result, there was plenty to unpack in this unexpected capitulation, with the West Africans learning some tough lessons with the World Cup less than three months away.

Here are the hot talking points from Nigeria's Serbian setback as the Road to Russia continues.




Nigeria's passing must improve

It's hard to remember too many occasions against Serbia in which Nigeria managed to string more than three passes together.
Without captain John Mikel Obi for the second game in succession, the Nigerians looked like they had no concept of the basic fundamentals of a passing game.

Moves constantly broke down, especially under high pressing, because players appeared unable to pick out a teammate under pressure.

It's not just the player in possession who was to blame, with a lack of movement off the ball also limiting options.
We have seen this team pass the ball better, against African opposition and against Argentina, but without Mikel, they lacked cohesion and confidence with the ball at feet.

When his team gets back together in May, Rohr will have to fashion out a way to have his players keep possession better, move the ball better and create chances.




Rohr shows flexibility with tactical tweak

Tuesday's starting XI represented something of a surprise as Rohr diverted from his usual approach.
In his previous 13 games with Nigeria, the German tactician has always started with a leading big man flanked by wide forwards in what was essentially a 4-2-3-1.

That line-leading position has been played by Odion Ighalo, Kelechi Iheanacho and Anthony Nwakaeme.

Against Serbia, however, he chose to go with Ahmed Musa in that central position in a more traditional 4-3-3. It would seem to appear that the Nigeria coach wanted to see if he could exploit the somewhat slow Serbian defence with pace and a bit of guile.

Musa's pace did trouble Branislav Ivanovic and his partners, but the trouble was that in deploying Wilfred Ndidi as the most advanced midfielder, Rohr sacrificed a creative link to those forwards.

Perhaps Joel Obi would have been better served up there, even though he misplaced a slew of passes by trying to do too much.
Could have also have deployed Alex Iwobi in this role?
Rohr ultimately discarded the experiment after 45 minutes, replacing Victor Moses with Ighalo and reverting to type.




Iwobi can be Mikel 2.0

Iwobi may not have been detailed to play there, but the Arsenal man regularly nipped centrally, to orchestrate play. He skipped away from opposing players with fancy footwork, played combination balls and generally conducted proceedings.

The trouble was, he was not supposed to be there, and kept bumping into the hapless Wilfred Ndidi. It was an impressively exquisite performance of ability, skill...and ill-discipline.

Over two games, the Super Eagles suffered from not having a player with the authority to control the play, to stabilise the game and ease pressure under unrelenting attacks.

That player is usually Mikel. On Tuesday, Iwobi showed that while he does not have Mikel's calm maturity to stabilise the play - at least not yet - he does have the ability to dictate play.

His quick passing, close control, skilled getaways from tight marking and combination passing were not perfect, but they provided a glimpse into what is possible if he were to be employed in this role.

On Tuesday, he showed tactical indiscipline by drifting inside too often rather than stretching the play.
However, it's not impossible that Rohr might opt to use Iwobi inside and employ Moses Simon and Moses in wide areas to offer pace on the flanks.
Lack of success aside, Rohr's choices showed that the coach is actively exploring the possibility of surprising some of his opponents.

This certainly bodes well for the hopes of a multifunctional player like Joel Obi to gatecrash the Russia party.





Uzoho isn't yet ready

Francis Uzoho: Talented? Yes. Future prospect? Yes. Current first choice? Absolutely not!

The wonderkid is growing in stature, but as expected, Uzoho is nowhere near ready to be the Super Eagles' number one goalkeeper going into the World Cup.

After 225 minutes of football, the 19-year-old still looks like the inexperienced goalkeeper that he is.

He mistimed crosses, misjudged balls and for the second time in two games, showed butter fingers as he let an effort slip under him and over the goalline.

Fortunately, there was no goalline technology to rule the effort in.

One area he did excel in was shot-stopping. On the occasions when he faced down strikers one on one, Uzoho read the threat brilliantly and smothered efforts with panache and confidence.

It would appear Uzoho is heading to Russia with the Super Eagles, and while he deserves to make the trip, he'd be a clear weak link if he starts.


Source: http://kwese.espn.com/football/blog-football-africa/story/3434536/nigeria-0-2-serbia-hot-talking-points?device=featurephone

Russia 2018 WC Countdown: 78 days 1 hour 3 mins to go

MetalJigsaw:
Lessons learnt from Nig vs Srb

1) Joel is over hyped. People of this thread can over hype for Africa and the universe. I'm not saying you he guy is bad but simply overrated on this thread

2) Without Mikel, our Midfield is totally empty no matter who is deployed.

3) Moses is a catalyst. We lacked fire power, threat and creativity in the final third as soon as he left.

4) If e no be Ekong-Balogun, e no fit be like Ekong-Balogun

5) We don't have a Left Back yet. Idowu was below par/ average again. The 3-5-2 formation is where he can thrive. Although he's not bad for a bench candidate

6) Uzoho deserves to be number one in Russia.
aAmong Ezenwa and Akpeyi

7) Those who clamour for Ajagun, Aluko and some notable AMs have the right to do so.

8.) Rohr already knows his team 95 percent. Its evident as agu and Ajayi could only come in in the last few minutes.

9) Ighalo surely deserves to be our number one striker in Russia. Just put Mikel behind him and he won't lack the ball.

10) Iwobi is useless as a winger. He can only thrive in a more central position, and he can give you goals or assists. A talented player though but still has a lot to learn.
Moses Simeon is still the beat man in the Wing position alongside V. Moses.

11) Tyronne, a very talented player but really inexperienced and very soft/ light. Shehu still has a claim.

12) 3-5-2 and 4-2-3-1 is the most suitable and ideal for our team- To pack the midfield

Gernot Rohr, I hope he takes note.

Goke7:
Call me whatever, Joel was a flop period

komekn:
Doing a lot of talking but in actual fact you are saying nothing, that = EVASION.

komekn:
Remember when I said Shehu is better defensively and Ebuehi is better going forward. I was told I am out of touch.

Fans will always be fickle now they are saying something else. I said that Aina both or somewhere in between.

And he is only getting 5 or 10 minute cameo

darkelf:
A contributor on brila just said he doesn't expect much from this team.

He said that he has his eyes set on Qatar 2022 and not this coming WC in Russia because it is a team for the future

He finally posited that we shouldn't expect much from this team and that we can only manage to survive the group stage in the WC

darkelf:
Just listening to amaju pinnicks interview on brila fm

He said that Ahmed Musa playing for 90mins was one of the high points of the game.

SMH. Someone whose continual invitation is shrouded in mystery.

My elders in the house, who can explain why we keep giving invitations to this guy?

kennysville:
Friends, countrymen, Nairalanders....
(Yes its been a while yall read that)

First of all, its a good thing that we lost the match so we dont have false expectations of our boys. To those who wanted the loss, yall got your wishes. To those who didnt want us to lose, well its part of the game.

Correct me folks if I am wrong, but we all knew we didnt have a creative midfielder outside of Mikel for almost 2years now. What exactly was done about it? We started looking for makeshift players to mould into creative midfielders. We knew that Alex Iwobi thrives more in the middle of the park than on the wings, yet we still kept making the same Wenger-ish mistakes. Of course I can understand he adds more attacking threat but the dude's natural forte is the Middle. If he had been encouraged more along this line, its possible we would be having a good midfield- Attack link up.

We also had Azubuike Okechukwu who in my opinion is one of the best creative midfielders we have but simply because he plays for one lowly rated team in turkey, we turned the other way. This dude was instrumental to the Gold we won at U23 Afcon, and the Bronze at the olympics. My assessment of our coach is that he is willing to take the risk of sticking with Mikel Obi as the only natural creative midfielder and hope he doesnt get injured. Pray tell folks, what happens if he gets knocked say in training? Then game plan gets disrupted abi? Then we get to run like headless chickens all over with no clear cut cerebral input geared towards attack. It is now evident to the whole world that without Mikel, our brand of footbal is gra gra and frankly at the world cup, they will exploit that promptly. Unfortunately at this time, it is too late to experiment with any new creative midfielder at this stage because we have to worry about them blending in for the team chemistry.
As someone rightly said, we should just continue with the set of players that got us qualified so as not to look disjointed. And perhaps, hope for the best from that.

My assessment of yesterday's game is that Rohr's game plan for the match was disrupted by the fact that Balogun failed last minute fitness test as well the reported fracture of Kelechi Iheanacho. He resorted to playing musa as a 9 and we got what we got. This tells me that he needs to work on having equally potent replacements for each of the positions.

Talking about Ebuehi and Idowu, i realize they are better suited for attack minded formations. This implies that when we wanna be bullish, Shehu is our man, but whe we wanna attack and keep an all out attack, we need these two boys ( Idowu and Ebuehi) hence the need to really perfect 3-5-2 and really sharpen it , primed for attack!

Our passing needs a lot of work. It is not nice to see us lose possession after 3 passes. Our forwards need to work together in that if a player is in a better positiin to score, then they shd pass to him instead of seeking personal glory (I dont wanna mention names). I dont have a problem with yesterday's team selection. What i have a problem with is the aim or objectives the coach set out to achieve. Was it to sit back and soak up pressure from the Serbs and then hit them on counter? If that was the case, then it was poorly executed


I believe in our team a lot. It just takes right tactics, right personels and executions for us to be able to win. It hurts that we are in the situation we are. I have said this before and I will still say it again, I wouldnt worry about our goal keeping "crises". It is the least of our worries right now. If our team is set up to always keep possession, you will find out that all our goalies will do will just be Goal kicks and routine clearances. In other words, there are things worse than goal keeper problems. Let us get our midfield and attack sharp. End of discussion!


Up Super Eagles

Martz101:
why are you guys like this, John Ogu so far has been better than Joel obi

Goke7:
What if Idowu gets injured? Who will play that role? We know ebuehi is a back up for Shehu and both omeruo or awazie can be back ups for Balogun and ekong but for that LB no one. Don't even mention Aina. His supporters have finally concluded he is better as a RB to defend his dismal outing against Algeria and Argentina. So echiejile remains relevant.

Goke7:
Echiejile is still a back up like omeruo I think. We don't really have a natural LB so the guy may still be relevant

Mujtahida:
We don talk an here tire but people say he can't dribble, he can't hold the ball and he can't pass. But he was more involved from the middle yesterday than in the first half playing from the wings.

MetalJigsaw:
The same Joel that I watched yesterday and against Poland?. Oya swear say Joel add any quality.

komekn:
You see what you want to see.

To buttress your point, state the argument you have assumed in the negative I present. I really expect more from you. But then when I contend with you on specific you go missing.


What is the agenda? state it according to you?

tbaba1234:
My world cup first 11

Uzoho

Ebuehi Ekong Balogun Idowu

.............Ndidi Onazi/Etebo/Ogu (twin pivot)

..................... ...Mikel

V.Moses........ Iwobi............. S. Moses

.....................Iheanacho..........

I am convinced that this is our best system with Iwobi playing with Mikel in the middle.

Iheanacho over Ighalo,

Mujtahida:
Guy this is the second time you saying this. Why do you say so. Wetin give you that impression

safarigirl:
I will never understand the rationale behind reading Komekn's posts

safarigirl:
at least nothing leaked from their end, if daddy Echiejile had played, we for dey yarn 5-0 sef

elyte89:
So what are cin now.....ABA MADE ?


OGBENI,START facing d reality


Beside,d only thing MUSA DID ON THE PITCH today was to COLLECT THE ARM BAND FROM ONAZI


D Question is y do we still invite dis MYOPIC MUSA GUY