Kevin Kilbane
Points were squandered as players don’t know their roles, we are predictable and it’s dreadful to watch
Players don’t know basics under O’Neill; it’s not good enough
IF Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are in charge for the long-term, including the Euro 2020 campaign, then surely Ireland’s approach to matches has to change. Because one point from the games against Denmark and Wales last week, when both were missing their world class, game-changing stars, is not good enough. And neither were the performances.
We’re now fully aware of the consequences of failure in UEFA’s new Nations League.
Unless we can somehow win by a large margin in Denmark next month, and Wales beat Denmark, we will finish bottom and be relegated from this level. This also means falling further down the seedings for the Euro 2020 qualifying draw.
That will make qualification for the Euro 2020 finals games in Dublin very difficult. A Euro final on home soil without Ireland is a depressing prospect.
O’Neill has repeatedly said that work really starts with the Euro 2020 qualification campaign, but he has just made his job even harder.
Now it is starting to dawn on people the ramifications of losing in this competition and why it needs to be taken seriously. Indeed, this will be apparent when UEFA comes to Dublin for the draw in December and we are among the third seeds.
I didn’t play under O’Neill, so I don’t know how he prepares his teams, but Chris Sutton pointed out last week that Celtic always went into games knowing their roles under the Derry man.
O’Neill deserves priase for his achievements with Ireland – in reaching the Euros and coming so close to World Cup qualification. But is he the right man to lead Ireland now? That is incredibly difficult to answer.
Without knowing his preparation methods, I am convinced the players he selected worked specifically on the Denmark and Wales games because every other Ireland manager has done so in the past.
Unless he is so unique that he feels he doesn’t need his players to go into games with a lot of preparation, I am sure it is being done. It just looks like the Ireland players don’t know how to get into positions to get the ball.
The number of times, in the Denmark game in particular, we found ourselves with two players close to each other and unable to play passes and move to get the ball forward or wide, was frightening.
Without Christian Eriksen, the simple fact is that Denmark came down to our level. They were there for the taking at home. And we didn’t have to worry about keeping the ball for long periods, we had the players to catch the Danes on the counter-attack.
England and Netherlands proved last week that you can beat quality opposition without dominating possession. It is just a question of how you use the ball when you have it.
Like many, I found the selection of Cyrus Christie in a midfield role for the two games very strange. It was made all the more puzzling with David Meyler, Conor Hourihane, Shaun Williams and Alan Browne on the bench. That’s four recognised Championship midfielders who didn’t see a minute of action in either game while Christie battled on.
It is difficult to criticise Christie because no one can question his energy, work-rate and commitment over the two games. He didn’t do anything wrong.
But he was chosen by O’Neill as the player who was going to get us up the pitch and bring the ball forward, playing two or three touches to bring the strikers into the game. He wasn’t comfortable trying to do it because it is simply not his game.
Christie’s strength is running without the ball. He is a supreme athlete with the ability to run away from defenders and shrug them off with his pace and power.
He is a natural right-sided player. I played with him at Coventry, and he has progressed into a good fullback with Derby, Middlesbrough and now Fulham. When he plays, he likes to get forward and get on the end of moves. But he is not a regular at Fulham.
He was playing out of position in the two games this week – and in Cardiff – and at times that really showed. Meyler, Hourihane, Williams and Browne must have been raging and I doubt they feel much better now.
Meyler, in particular, played very well against Wales in the holding role a year ago, Williams did well in the two appearances last month and Browne was Player of the Year at Preston last season.
I have some sympathy with Christie. I was moved inside to a central role with Ireland by Brian Kerr but the difference was I had done so with my club and the Ireland Under21s. Christie admitted he hadn’t played in that poition since he was 14.
We don’t know what preparations Christie went through before the games and whether O’Neill is a big believer in talented players working it out for themselves. Perhaps he feels giving players like Christie too much information, for such a crucial role, would put them too much under pressure.
What I do know from my own experience is that every Ireland manager I played under was meticulous in their preparation, working on 1-to-11 and team shape while passing on any knowledge of the opposition in the analysis with the staff.
Many players love to digest as much information as possible on their opponents, particularly defenders and midfielders who liked to know players’ weaknesses. Strikers prefer to be the ones who just want to play.
Kerr introduced video analysis with Brian McCarthy and Giovanni Trapattoni also liked to work with the technology.
Trapattoni loved working with individuals on the training ground more as well as going through their roles. That was why we were so solid and compact and difficult to play against. Everyone knew exactly what they were expected to do and the Italian had his own inimitable, but effective, way of telling you when he wasn’t happy.
He didn’t bring anything new or revolutionary into my game. It was as simple as you could get. But that simplicity was why we were so
effective. Everyone knew their roles.
It didn’t just happen. We worked on the training ground for hours on how we were going to defend and attack as a team and how we would get the ball into Kevin Doyle and Robbie Keane. And through those training sessions, everyone pretty much knew the team before it was announced by the manager in his pre-match press conference.
Looking back on the two games this week, the one player we have who is capable of providing an ‘out-ball’ – an option to keep possession and engage with others on both sides – is James McClean.
He could be a major player in the three-at-the-back system because he has the ability and is a brilliant traveller with the ball. But he was so deep, and playing in another unfamiliar role at left wing-back, that he could never do that. I felt for him.
Inevitably we ended up playing long balls from the back and squandering possession.
We made it too easy for Denmark’s Thomas Delaney and Joe Allen of Wales to dictate the games. And we had no one around the front players to play off the few knockdowns, leaving the strikers isolated and chasing lost causes.
Denmark and Wales were definitely there for the taking without Eriksen and Gareth Bale. We had a great chance to go top of this group. But it was far too easy for them. We played a predictable style of football which just didn’t work and was awful to watch.
The argument is that we don’t have the players at the moment and, of course, we have missed Seamus Coleman, Robbie Brady and James McCarthy, who will hopefully be fit next month.
But within our side, and squad, there was more Premier League experience, compared to Wales – without Bale and Aaron Ramsey – but they looked much more vibrant, organised and dangerous on the break.
It was an even match, although Wales could have scored a second to make it look much worse. However, the Ireland players should have been lifted by Bale’s absence, and Ramsey’s, and Eriksen’s for that matter.
They just didn’t do enough to build on that and make something happen over 180 minutes. And that is worrying.