IRELAND LUXEMBOURG GROUP A KOMPANY City legend’s confidence rewarded as Cullen carries great Anderlecht form onto the international stage

IT wasn’t the result he wanted on his competitive Ireland debut but, for Josh Cullen, selection alone provided a big reward for taking the gamble of his football career.

Cullen, 24, left West Ham for Vincent Kompany’s Anderlecht (inset) on a three-year deal in September and quickly settled into the rhythm of Belgian football. Getting the nod from Stephen Kenny to start in Serbia and producing an outstanding performance was an exciting climax to a whirlwind week, even if he was red carded on Sunday, just 15 minutes after coming on in Anderlecht’s 4-1 win over Zulte Waregem He met up with the Ireland squad on Monday to begin an intensive build-up and, on Wednesday night, he became just the sixth Irish player to line out in a competitive international for the Republic while with a club on the continent.

Despite his disappointment with the 3-2 reversal at the Red Star Stadium, Cullen was pleased his decision to leave English football behind had a positive impact on Kenny’s choice, as he got the nod ahead of Premiership players Jeff Hendrick and Robbie Brady. “Any player needs to be playing games to prove and to show what they can do and what they’re about,” said Cullen.

“To move to a massive club like Anderlecht and experience a different league and a different style of football has been beneficial for me, I feel.

“Like I said, the most important thing for any player is to be playing games and I’ve been doing that at Anderlecht, and I’ve felt in pretty good shape myself.

“It’s been a pretty good start there so far.”

Cullen added: “When the manager told me I was starting I was delighted.

“To get my first competitive start for my country was a really proud moment for me and my family, and of course from the moment he told me I was excited and looking forward to the game.

“Obviously I was delighted to be in the team in a big game to start a World Cup campaign and yeah, you want to be playing in big games like that.

“I’ll only benefit from the experience in playing a team like that, a good side. Hopefully I can build on that performance moving forward.”

As part of that intensive preparation, Cullen and the rest of the squad had to quickly get to grips with playing in a 3-5-2 formation for the first time in Kenny’s reign.

On the whole, it worked well enough. On another night, perhaps, Serbia might not have been so clinical with the few goal chances they were able to produce.

But Aleksander Mitrovic rediscovered his scoring form at the wrong time for Ireland, and Dusan Vlahovic enhanced his already growing reputation.

“To be honest with you, there wasn’t a lot of work that we were able to do,” said Cullen regarding the tactics.

“So there was a lot of information about the system and the way we wanted to go about the game crammed into a couple of days.

“But I feel like the system worked well and we showed some positive progress – we can take positives from it.

“By no means are we getting carried away with the performance, thinking we’re there, but we can look at and say, ‘We did certain things well’ and also that there’s a lot to work on.

“So not a lot of time to work together but another two or three days now to work together before Saturday and keep trying to get better as a team.”

The home tie against Luxembourg can only be described as a must-win encounter

“To qualify for the World Cup you must be winning games,” added Cullen. “We know that the majority of them are must-win games.

“So whether we had won, drawn or lost against Serbia, we’d have been going into Saturday needing to win.

“Nothing changes there and we’ll just look to have a couple of good days now building into the game, and go in with confidence with some of the positives from the Serbia one.

“It makes it a very important game. There’s no international team you can ever underestimate, the approach and mindset of the team will be no different coming into Saturday as it was from coming into Serbia.

“Now our full focus turns to Saturday – and making sure we put in a good performance and getting the result we are all after.”