Web Dev Ireland

Well it’s the big day! Ireland Vs France at Lansdowne Rd.
I have recently started to work up the road from Lansdowne Road and I am really excited about the game tonight. I was curious about what happens the day of the game so I went out at lunch and took some photos. The anwser is quite simply … Nothing, at least nothing you can see from outside the grounds. There are a lot of vans going in and out of the grounds but nothing really outside except some barriers and a few extra Garda.
So anyway tonight for those of you not in the know is a huge game in terms of Irelands chances of qualifying for the World Cup in Germany 2006 If we win tonight we will have a very good chance of qualifying from group 4. I can’t wait to see how this game goes . Here is another picture of the East stand I took today. Everyone cross your fingers!

Newcastle United (The team I support) are after signing Luque from Deportivo La Coruna for a reported £10 million. The player is a left sided forward, not quite a striker more an attacking left winger. A good signing in my opinion, I just hope he doesn’t turn out like Laurent Robert!

But the real problem that Newcastle have is that we cannot attract the top, top players. Alan Shearer(35) is a legend on Tyneside as I’m sure you know, but he was the source of most of Newcastles goals for the last few years and he hasn’t been replaced yet. Last year we tried to replace him with Wayne Rooney, then Manchester United got involved and there was no chance he was coming our way.

This year we have tried to get Micheal Owen but he has stated he would only come on loan for a year. His reasons for this are he doesn’t want to risk being involved with Newcastle in-case things go pear-shaped and he is stuck with a mid-table team.

So we find Newcastle stuck in a catch-22 situation.
1) We will never be a top 4 club again without a 20+ a year goal scorer
2)No 20+ a year striker wants to play for a non top 4 club!

So how do we solve this problem?

Short-term:
1)Pay way over the odds for a good striker (Chelsea tried this and they got no-one)
2)Take a chance on someone less proven (Kuyt for example)

Long-term:
1)Produce home-grown players through the clubs academy
2)Scout the promising talent better and earlier then the bigger clubs

The problem with this is that it’s very hard to get any of the above right, hence the large gulf in class between the big clubs and the not-so-big clubs.

Only time will tell if they can get this right, short or long term.

I was watching the Arsenal Vs Newcastle match at the weekend and have to admit that the referee had a huge bearing on the outcome of that match.
The Tackle

As you can see from this photo the referee is blocked from seeing the tackle by two players. How can He possibly make the decision to send him off from there? That sending off changed the game. Newcastle battled very hard with ten men for 80 minutes and looked like pulling off a well deserved draw.

The referee on the other hand had other ideas, N’Zogbia barely touched off Ljungberg and he went over in the box. Penalty! After that Newcastle had no chance, Henry slotted the ball into the bottom right corner and Van Persie added another just minutes after coming on to replace Bergkamp to seal the victory.

If the referee had seen the incident he would not have given Jenas a red card, but as it turns out he only seen Gilberto’s reaction to the tackle and acted on that. Newcastle were more then a match for Arsenal up until that point and had successfully restricted Arsenals chances.

Will that decision by the referee have a bearing on how these teams finish at the end of the season? Only time will tell.

Update

Referee admits mistake

Some Justice seems to have been done as the referee has requested the red card be reduced to a yellow. This obviously will not be of much comfort to Newcastle boss Souness as he will lament what could have been with eleven players on the pitch.