Iwobi tests positive for coronavirus while Ireland are humbled

I hope Alex makes a full recovery and finds his mojo, which he’d lost and found at the Wolves away match and has lost again.

"Come back all guns blazing"? It's Covid-19 positive test he's got, not a full body and brain transplant! :-)

An inexperienced manager at Ireland was always going to end this way. It will be a while before Ireland are competitive at international level. . . and the pool of players is not what it use to be.

Danny, I feel you tempted fate by knocking games against minnows ahead of Ireland vs Luxembourg. In fairness, they have the weakest squad they've had in my lifetime.

Jerome,

The optics aren't good but the team is weak. Maybe Stephen Kenny is out of his depth but think back to when Michael O'Neill took on a weak Northern Ireland team and had 2 years of misery as he bought in some youngsters and figured out how to get the best out of his journeymen.

Without being at the training ground, I don't know if Stephen Kenny knows what he's doing or not but I wouldn't pass judgement purely on results at this point. Having had a tutelage under Mick, I'm hopeful he can turn it around but, as I say, I may have misplaced faith as I don't have access to training.

I watched Czechia and I think England will have a time. They look a lot better than in qualifying with the West Ham lads and Vydra who's not great but he's good enough to do damage. I also saw Portugal get robbed with an offside/handball goal and an inverse Russian linesman call disallowing Ronaldo's strike.

On Iwobi, I'm guessing people assume he's young, he will be fine, have a joke at his expense. I get it but it's a serious illness and God forbid he gave it to his mum or his grandma — assuming his own case isn't serious — which as yet we don't know. Hope he is okay.

The BBC news reported that there were 30,000 new cases in Poland yesterday. The third wave is galloping through Europe and the match should be postponed.

As you say, that's the territory that Ireland are in. Recovering from an IFA scandal and mercenary managers. I thought Trapattoni did well, but O'Neill and Keane were clowns. In O'Neill's case, I was very disappointed after being at his table at a dinner once, where he showed an outstanding inspirational knowledge of football. McCarthy did get back some respect.

I hope that Stephen Kenny can get more out of the players who are journeymen and good, but not outstanding players at best. Coleman, motivated as always, at his age, looks a step up. Maybe Brexit will allow more Irish players to get playing at the higher levels of football.

As you say, Michael O'Neill did a terrific job with Northern Ireland with limited selection and there are similar glimpses in how Ireland now play. They did have well-worked opportunities in the game. Though I think Kenny should be given more time, there is definitely a feeling of a misplaced risk, as you say.

On topic, both relating to international football and Covid, did anyone else watch Holland v Latvia? Interesting that spectators were present. It was a bit odd however as there seemed to be different sections with different rules / restrictions. Behind the goal, a section that appeared to have no social distancing whatsoever applied. Then other areas were people were sat in 2s and 3s with social distancing spacing between.

Almost as if they were experimenting different approaches in one game. Haven't read anything yet, so can't comment on the thinking but regardless, it was great to see and hear reasonably significant numbers of fans back in a football stadium.

I fervently hope he's back by June.

I am unable to find any news stories at all saying that he's sick or symptomatic, just that he tested positive. As we know, many times people have the virus but don't become ill. Let's hope Alex is one of those.

I suppose I should apologise to you and Michael on behalf of the collective and the original trigger post for disrupting your Sunday, causing you both to have to step in and do some admin stuff on your weekend.

Thanks for continuing to facilitate this fine site.

Anyway, possibly the same reason, testing different approaches to minimising the risk of spread.

It is hard enough keeping players Covid-free where they play their club football locally where protocols are kept tightly, but asking players to jump on an aeroplane to anywhere in the world where Covid controls may be far more lax is downright stupid.

Just to remind, Covid can affect the human body for many years.

Again.

Completely agree. Watch the Whyte/Povetkin fight from last night, and look at Poevetkin from the first few seconds; he wasn't right. Had covid which cancelled the first fight.

I know numerous cases locally with people that this has happened to, to have internationals during a pandemic stinks and makes no sense, bar for those making money from it.

If the FA and those in Italy, Spain, Germany and France had had any balls, they would have resigned from FIFA after the farce of a 'vote' that put a World Cup in Qatar.

If the top European Leagues had said then that they would not release players for this event, and arranged their own, inviting the top American and African sides then it would have ended the corrupt monopoly in one go.

A more streamlined body could have invited the support of the other major FAs. I still hope to see it happen. There is no benefit a the moment, for instance, of England, Poland and Hungary playing 18 games against Albania, Andorra and San Marino just so they can clock up some goal difference in case they can't separate each other at the business end of the table. This is repeated through other groups. It would be better for those countries to play a second-tier tournament with play-offs against the lower teams from the top tier.

A bit of a rant I know. But why are we allowing this corrupt body to continue to run the game in such a bizarre way?

I won't blame Iwobi for this but I bet, if he was a ship's captain, he'd do something like this.

The only way to bring down Fifa is financially, and from within. Like the NRA in the United States.

Worse, was that we actually have plenty of talent in that age group.

As we Americans know, how MLS is run is its own whole discussion.

Oh well, let's hope we get to the World Cup this time.

Mike, I think you have said the standard of coaching is lacking right?

No, you sit behind your keyboards, throwing out bile against a man whose only crime is that he was chosen to be part of the first-team squad. The man is a human being and deserves better.

All those years I had to watch (IMO) the very-very poor and very limited Tony Hibbert, but I never once gave him dogs abuse, no matter how frustrating he was.

If I was Iwobi, I would find this thread amusing and inspiring.

Not my favorite player by a country mile, Alex Iwobi has a potentially serious illness and deserves our sympathy and respect, not the cheap jibes from people, most of whom couldn't hit the River Mersey from the Runcorn Bridge with a ball.

I defend the right of people to post any views, but I would have expected more from my fellow Evertonians. Perhaps not as this is, after all, ToffeeWeb.

I don't know the inner workings of our National Team organization. My guess is that the World Cup is the priority.

So a decision was made to keep our U-23 top talent (which we sure have) out of the Olympic team to save them for World Cup qualifying.

Sorry to hear that this thread has upset you, that it epitomises ToffeeWeb for you, and that you no longer are an avid reader.

While some of the posts are nasty, and belittle both the player and the potential seriousness of the disease, my impression (without reading them all again) was that they were typically light-hearted in the main, and reflected both the humour and diverse (and yes, the less desirable) membership of our fanbase, as well as reflecting the hugely disappointing contribution the player himself has made to our campaign this season.

You blame ToffeeWeb for this. I wonder what it is you expect us to do about it?

These posts unquestionably represent a range of views and opinions from Everton fans themselves. Do you expect us to intercept and remove ones that you are not going to like? Perhaps you can see how difficult that would be...

Or do you not want these other Evertonians to post their views at all because they upset you? The tendency today with social media is to chisel out your own bubble of the like-minded and only exchange similar views with them, isolating yourself from the great unwashed horde and their nasty, vicious, baseless, cowardly, hateful and ignorance.

Surely better to stay and challenge them directly for their baseness, than storming off, if you really feel that strongly?

If any other clubs offer anything half reasonable (half of what we paid) for him we should snatch it and run.

Far too much personal abuse on this site which in my opinion is not dealt with appropriately. I suffered a torrent of personal abusive filth on the live forum at the last home game. I reported it during the game by clicking on the report link and after the game by emailing Lyndon on an email address that he used to contact me last November. To date I have had no acknowledgement or reply to either report. Not good enough.

The original point raised by Peter is relating to abuse of an Everton player. Many on here criticise players and the manager alike according to their footballing views. That's welcome and what sites like this are all about; debating different views... otherwise, we may as well signpost ourselves to subsets of ToffeeWeb where we all agree with like-minded people.

The point Ian raises is slightly different as we are talking personal abuse to fellow posters because we disagree. I think we all accept debate can get heated, which is acceptable. Also that sometimes context in the written word can be taken the wrong way, were it said face-to-face.

But in both cases, it is abuse if it crosses a threshold where it becomes unacceptable, as Ian states. Unless blindingly obvious to all, the complexity is that we all have different tolerance thresholds.

I understand Peter's frustration with some of the views, although personally I don't see anything massively offensive or over the top. Perhaps ill-thought and not presented very well, but no malicious intent and more dark humour than anything.

I think Michael and the editorial team do a very good job and maintain a delicate balancing act between stepping in where appropriate and allowing discussion to flow, even when it starts getting heated and personal. Often in their own time I suspect.

We are all guilty sometimes, myself included, but the old saying of think before you speak is magnified on Internet forums in the guise of think before you write and post. Especially on that live forum, which in the emotion of the moment, can very quickly get very toxic.

That's my view or, as Ken Buckley used to say, how I see it "from my seat".

I went through the Live Forum posts after the fact and removed the posting privileges for those who abused you. This will perhaps improve your experience of the next Live Forum.

Peter,

So "ToffeeWeb’s posters have been a mean-spirited bunch for years"?

Sweeping generalization there, Peter. There are some really nice people on here who bend over backwards to empathize with their fellow supporters and share personal tragedy and grief. But you probably skip over those posts.

I'm sorry but you'll have to help me here if your post is to mean anything: let's have some specifics, please, as I don't know what you are classing as 'rejoicing' and really I can't see that much bile, to be honest. Name and number, please!