Hahaha he scores. Have to say I disagree with you two. Too early a judgement. 17 months without a game, a debutant and a team trying to play a new type of game for us. Havent thought he was that bad, just inexperienced. His job is to score goals, he just did.
His job is also to be an option for a pass while in transition, and to recieve and make passes, he wasn't doing well enough in that regard. He wasn't bad, just struggling with the step up in pace. Goal was well worked though, so hats off to him.
jeez give the kid a break, its his first international with a new coach and new instructions. Everyone is gonna be finding their stride and place in the team. He did the one thing we really needed him to do - put the ball in the back of the net.
Give the kid a break? It's not like I was beating on him, all I was referring to is the step up required for international football can be difficult, not that he's shark and should be dropped forever. It's also not fudgeing tiddlywinks, we need to expect more of our players regardless of the team, the systems or the situation. Stop being precious.
I wasn't expecting anything, I know McCowatt is a good player and has a huge future, but it's still a fair and relatively benign (or so I thought) comment to say a player is struggling when stepping up a level. Particularly going from the a-league to international. I'm not sure how this has offended so many people, like half the forum are McCowatt's family or something.
Im not sure that anyone has taken offence - for me its a little unfair to say a player is struggling at international level when he's less than 30 minutes into his first game. I was simply saying you should at least give him two or three games before you start saying he's struggling at this level.
Some dude literally told me to fudge off and that I'm a twit. Saying that a player is struggling after 30 minutes making the step up isn't the same thing as you think he'll never make it. It was just an objective perspective based on what I was seeing, and it showed again before Ireland's second goal.
not sure that shows "Taking offence" but maybe a little aggressive given the perceived jusdgement of a player over a short period of time. Eitherway - I called you out for being a little harsh on the kid, and to be fair that second goal cant be on McCowatt - he was defending deeper than he probably needed to be - where was his defender?
meh, semantics. but seriously if young forward player is on debut and in 30 minutes he's tearing up the opposition and causing all sorts of problems and looking like a young messi, would it be OK to say - "wow, he's really made the step up well". Or would you get chastised and told hey, you can't make that sort of judgement of youngster until he's played 3 games at least.