Doherty slams O’Neill’s ‘bizarre’ training regime

WOLVES defender Matt Doherty has criticised the ‘bizarre’ management of Martin O’Neill and questioned the contribution of assistant Roy Keane after the pair were sacked by the Republic of Ireland.

There has long since been talk of players being concerned with their training methods but Doherty has broken ranks to make his feelings known.

The 26-year-old, who won four caps under O’Neill (below) and Keane, said: ‘Everyone thinks there wasn’t a game plan every time. That’s not entirely true. Sometimes there was, sometimes it was less clear.

‘Compared to the set-up I have at Wolves, where we have a lot of Portuguese coaches, you could class it as old-school.

‘When you were away with Ireland, you didn’t really have that much coaching. It was more of five-a-side, or an 11-a-side game, and that would be it.

‘The day before a game, you would do a few set-pieces here and there and then go into the game. You’re kind of thinking: “What shape are we going to play?”.

‘You’d have a few players thinking: “We’ll play this shape” or someone else thinking something else. You can’t have that, especially at international football, people not really sure on what their role is the next day. It is bizarre, but like I said, it didn’t happen all the time. There were odd occasions when it did happen.’

Keane’s role had also been questioned and Doherty, in a radio interview with RTE, said: ‘It wasn’t necessarily a case where he has taken the session and was doing shape, it wasn’t a case of that at all. I guess he was just a back-up to Martin. I wouldn’t say he was much of a hands-on on the training pitch.’