Every Monday morning on OTB AM, we bring you the Gillette Pressure Rankings.
We look around the world of sport for the individuals, teams and organisations feeling the heat and we rank them. Eoin Sheahan took us through this week's top five:
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5. Meath Sympathisers
“These are the people who made excuses in the past for Meath football and their thuggery. They’re now under pressure to hold up their end of the bargain and basically argue that Meath weren’t all that bad.
“This follows up on Tommy Conlon’s comments in the Sunday Independent about the Sean Boylan documentary and how it fails to dig into how this team were really more brutal than any other team of that era and probably more brutal than any other team we’ve seen in recent history.
“If we look at the men we’re talking about here, I’m not sure that too many of these men needed help looking after themselves or to use their elbows. This was an era where the hard man was at his zeitgeist.
“There wasn’t that much protection from the officials but also because there was a physicality in the game that would be rewarded greatly.”
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4. France Football
“The pressure on France Football Magazine must be incredible now. Calling off the Ballon d’Or was one of the most stupid things we’ve seen. It was very like Ligue 1 getting ahead of themselves and calling off their entire league.
“France Football Magazine who organise the Ballon d’Or will have Robert Lewandowski banging on their door to bring back the award because he is the unanimous pick.
“He’s scored 13 goals in seven Champions League appearances. Four behind Ronaldo in one season which is 17. There is a good chance he could get that despite not playing any second leg games.
“He has scored goals in 82% of the matches he’s played in and out of the seven goals they scored against Chelsea in both legs, Lewandowski has scored or assisted all of them.
“Who would’ve thought that the French would let down the football community so badly.”
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3. Snooker Next-Generation
“They are under pressure to get the finger out and get good. That’s all they’ve got to do.
“Ronnie O’Sullivan said that he would need to lose an arm and a leg for him to drop out of the top 50 in the world. He said the next generation are rubbish and that is the reason that players like him are able to hang around for so long.
“He basically said that everybody that has come through in snooker is sh*t. Is he wrong? Certainly, the profile of the game is not what it once was. We certainly look out for Ronnie O’Sullivan rather than some young player.
If you were anyone under the age of 35, playing snooker and listening to this, you would be saying, ‘let’s get my ass into gear here and prove that I’m able to beat him in snooker.’
“Somebody needs to come and give Ronnie O’Sullivan a good beating but potentially that may not happen.”
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2. Manchester City
“We know when you talk-the-talk of taking a selfie in front of the Sky News story that your European ban has been lifted, you’ve got to walk-the-walk by winning the European competition.
“Everybody will start sharing the picture of Pep and his mates and that selfie if they get knocked out of the Champions League. They immediately put the pressure on their shoulders.
“They have a phenomenal chance this year to win the Champions League, because Bayern Munich and Barcelona are drawn against each other. This is an amazing opportunity for Manchester City.”
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1. Brooks Koepka
“When you play with fire, you’re going to get burned eventually. On Saturday night Koepka was asked how he felt entering the final round, chasing his 'old buddy' Dustin Johnson.
“Koepka decided it was time to show Johnson what it was all about. Koepka said he liked his chances because he was in this position before and capitalised. He said Johnson has only won one major.
“Koepka ended up shooting four over par in a 74-par round. It’s well written that he only beat one player out of the 78 he was competing against. So, to say this blew up in his face is an understatement.”
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