CAN O’NEILL GET TIMING RIGHT OVER HOOLAHAN?
With goals and guile in short supply, Wes must be unleashed on Moldova
IT’S 19 years since Damien Richardson, then managing Shelbourne, made a selection call, one which returned to haunt him. Faced with the choice of allowing midfielder Pat Fenlon serve a one-game ban in either the decisive final league game of the season, or the FAI Cup final, he chose the former.
The strategy back-fired as Shels lost 2-1 to Dundalk when a draw would have clinched the title, and then coughed up the FAI Cup final, to Cork City, after a replay.
‘It’s a decision I regret, as the next game should always be the most important game,’ admitted Richardson subsequently.
Scroll forward to this week and Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill has a similar dilemma to that of Richardson, regarding Wes Hoolahan.
In his 36th year, it’s a stretch to ask Hoolahan to start two World Cup qualifiers inside 72 hours, and expect him to be at his effective best.
He could certainly start one game, and maybe figure as a substitute in the other, but which way will the ball break for him?
It’s O’Neill’s call, one of many big ones he must make in the coming week as he seeks to plot a route to the play-offs.
Last month, O’Neill felt his team could get by against Georgia without Hoolahan, who was kept in reserve for the greater challenge posed by Siberia.
It was a calculated judgment, which O’Neill was entitled to make. Amid the subsequent wailing and gnashing of teeth, it was probably the right one too.
Even without Hoolahan in Tbilisi, Ireland created six gilt-edged goal chances, and only converted one.
In Dublin three days later, Hoolahan brought his artistry to the Aviva canvass and held up well for an hour before being replaced after the slick Serbs went in front.
Opinion on Hoolahan is split.
To his champions, he is the only midfielder with any vision or guile, who is invariably at the hub of Ireland’s more creative moments under O’Neill against Sweden and Italy in the Euro 2016 finals, for example.
In this campaign, though sparingly used, his passing qualities were evident in the lead goal in Moldova, and the match-winner in Austria. Others share a view that his slight frame and ageing limbs aren’t suited to the physical intensity of international football, and that O’Neill is right to use him sparingly. They point out that if Hoolahan was as good as his supporters claim, why hasn’t he played more than 102 career league games out of 405 in the Premier League? As a former midfielder himself, O’Neill has been around the block long enough to appreciate Hoolahan’s value. He has kept the Dubliner in every squad since he became manager four years ago, often joking at how Hoolahan may be the oldest player in the squad but he looks like the youngest. To Hoolahan this week, O’Neill must turn. His hand has been forced as much by the precarious position Ireland find themselves in Group D, as by the absence of others.
Of the five players who lined up across midfield against Serbia last month, O’Neill is without Robbie Brady, James McClean, both suspended, and the injured Jon Walters for the visit of Moldova on Friday.
There is also a major doubt over the availability of Harry Arter, who has an Achilles injury and has missed Bournemouth’s last two games.
Even if they were all on board, with a returning Jeff Hendrick too, O’Neill would be seriously considering the value of starting Hoolahan against Moldova.
Right now, Ireland need a strong reviver, in the form of a muchneeded win and some goals. So far, in this campaign, they’ve managed just two goals at Lansdowne Road, against Georgia and Austria.
It’s a pathetic return. Across Europe, only the Faroes, Latvia, San Marino and Liechtenstein have scored fewer at home in these World Cup qualifiers — that’s how grim it has become at the Aviva.
It’s time to shine light into a darkening campaign, and put smiles on Irish faces ahead of the trip to Wales next Monday.
Going to Cardiff on the back of a win, and a goal-fest, is what Ireland needs right now.
For that to happen, Hoolahan is the player best equipped to load the ammo into the breeches for others to fire.
His eye for the killer pass may not have out-foxed the wily Serbs but the lumbering Moldovans possess far less cunning.
Unlike Richardson, who held Fenlon back in 1998 for what he felt was the bigger match, O’Neill can’t afford such a dicey strategy.
Richardson was right when he said the next game is always the more important.
For Ireland. that ‘next game’ is Moldova on Friday where Hoolahan must start.
Keeping him under wraps for Cardiff is pointless as that game might be irrelevant.
Friday is where it counts; it’s time for O’Neill to turn to his impish veteran for a World Cup lifeline.