Forest’s fall is so hard to comprehend for old boy O’Neill
MARTIN O’NEILL will peek through his fingers as events unfold at the City Ground today where nothing less than a win against Ipswich will save Nottingham Forest from relegation to the third tier of English football.
The Republic of Ireland manager is shocked at the demise of Forest, the club he served for a decade, winning English League, European Cup and League Cup honours under Brian Clough, and who were keen to entice him back as manager 13 months ago.
‘A couple of weeks ago, Tony Woodcock, John Robertson and I met up at Trevor Francis’ wife’s funeral; it was a really sad occasion,’ he said.
‘We were talking about Forest and the debacle there. For a team to have won the European Cup twice and be English champions, to be in the third tier of English football would be pretty bad.’
O’Neill is amazed at the number of traditionally strong clubs labouring in the Championship.
‘You think of sides there could be in the Premier League. Newcastle are going up, but there’s (Aston) Villa, Wolves, Leeds United and Forest, too. All big clubs out of the big time,’ he said.
The Championship ends today, excluding the playoffs, and the early finish has shaped O’Neill’s plans for the three international ties in June, against Mexico in New Jersey (June 1) and Uruguay (June 4) and Austria (June 11), both in Dublin.
In contrast to the countdown to Euro 2016 qualifier against Scotland two years ago, O’Neill has added a training camp and a full international to help preparation for the huge World Cup qualifier against the Austrians.
There will be a three-day get together in Fota Island on May 23-25 for the likes of Shane Duffy (Brighton), Ciaran Clark and Rob Eliott (Newcastle), Wes Hoolahan (Norwich), Richard Keogh, Alex Pearce and Cyrus Christie (Derby County), Eunan O’Kane (Leeds) John Egan (Brentford) and David McGoldrick (Ipswich), whose season ends today.
‘We’ll probably have around 15 players in Fota and it will bring their sharpness up before we go to the States.
‘There’s a short turnaround between the Mexico and Uruguay games, which we couldn’t do anything about it but I wanted the Mexico game as I felt the length of time the Championship players would be without a game would be too long.
‘For the Uruguay game, you’d be thinking of players who would be needed for the Austria game so having the extra game against Mexico gives me a chance to have a proper look at all the players.’
O’Neill will name his squad for the busy end-of-season programme on Monday week.
He was lukewarm on Friday about drafting in inform Sean Maguire (Cork City) or Cillian Sheridan (Jagiellonia Bialystok) and spoke about players earning the right to a cap.
Last autumn, O’Neil took a punt on Dundalk duo Daryl Horgan and Andy Boyle, which paid off. With so few strikers around, a punt on either Maguire or Sheridan might not go amiss.