THE SALVAGE SQUAD
Ireland need two two wins from their final Group D matches to have any hope of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup and boss Martin O’Neill has no hang ups about how they’re achieved
THERE is a tone Ireland managers seem fated to eventually adopt. It is stranded somewhere between incredulity and resignation.
The latter is occasioned by their realisation that the players available for selection are modestly talented; the former by the revelation that there is an influential body of opinion arguing otherwise, insisting Ireland should play soccer with the fluent threat of Germany or Spain.
Giovanni Trapattoni’s public conversations as Ireland manager were mostly conducted in this tone, particularly towards the end of his reign. He raged like Lear at the possibility anyone could think the Irish squad was anything but a group of triers best served by conservative, huddle-and-hope tactics.
Meanwhile, influential pundits were proclaiming that Ireland were capable of better, much better, that there was a skilful team waiting to be liberated. They made this argument when Stephen Staunton’s ill-starred reign was ended, too.
And now they are making it as Martin O’Neill tries to salvage this World Cup qualifying campaign.
In Dublin on Tuesday afternoon, he was in a very serious mood. He wasn’t yet sounding the exasperated tone of a man unable to find, let alone unlock the talents that some maintain are available to him.
But he was in no mood for fun, either, ignoring increasingly desperate attempts at small talk from some of his interlocutors. There are practical urgencies consuming his attention, with Ireland needing to defeat Moldova at home on Friday night before having to travel to Cardiff and do the same against a reviving Wales three nights later.
He understands, though, that the arguments about his team selections and how they are said to reflect his style, will resume if results in those two games are insufficient and Ireland fail to make the play-offs. If Ireland win, then fans are happy and they don’t care much who is in the side. If they lose, then debates about players like Wes Hoolahan are resurrected.
‘People don’t remember performances,’ argued O’Neill after announcing his squad. ‘That’s the whole point. They will do for a little while and if the team continues to play like that, it could be something.
‘But we’re in a results business. And when we qualified for the Euros, we played some really decent stuff trying to get there. It was a tough ask to get there and we certainly played some decent stuff there.
‘That’s the reason why 30,000, maybe 40,000, people descended on the tournament in France. The same fans want to travel onto Russia and, at the end of the day, if you turned around to the fans that go to the matches (and said) “Listen here, we’ll see it through by winning these two tough matches to make it through”, that’s what they want to do. They want to enjoy themselves again at a tournament.’ Those comments reveal O’Neill’s perceptiveness; he understands that if the fans are happy, then the grumbling of an RTÉ panel is irrelevant. As long as Ireland win, arguments about how he picks and orders his team are confined to the realm of the philosophical. ‘So this idea in terms of a performance,’ he continued, ‘we’ve had some really good performances and some mediocre performances. That is what makes up the qualification. That’s exactly what happens.’ This position can be shrunk to one well-worn phrase: the end justifies the means.
He maintains the displays of the team over these decisive two matches will not influence whether he signs a new contract.
That was a topic he had no interest in engaging on this week, except to insist that these matches will not play into considerations of his future.
That is his perspective, of course; the stance of the Football Association of Ireland is likely to be more closely aligned to how Ireland fare. The end, rather than the means, is their concern, too. Ireland win, everyone is happy. Defeat is more complicated.
‘I didn’t think we were brilliant against Georgia, particularly in the first half,’ said O’Neill on the topic of performances.
‘The irony of that is that we created more good chances than we have in games that we have actually done well in. We are in a tough old group. We have been beaten once; we were beaten by Serbia and I don’t think we deserved to get beaten in that game.
‘That was a tough, tough match. You only have to ask (Serbian captain Branislav) Ivanovic afterwards to see how tough the game was. So we have got beaten once in the group.
‘Our record in the Aviva if you look
THE CHANCES OF SEAN MAGUIRE LEADING THE IRISH LINE AREN’T RATED HIGHLY
at it there, while our away form was great this time, at the Aviva we drew matches, we drew against Wales when we were really understrength and I didn’t mind that at the end of the day. And against Austria, which could have gone either way, though we might have got a (second) goal at the end of the match.’
In branding his game a results business, O’Neill is repeating the oldest truth in sport.
To do what is required next Friday and the following Monday, then, expect him to rely on trusted players. A call-up for Scott Hogan was one of the few diversions in the extended squad made public on Tuesday, but the chances of him or Sean Maguire being relied upon to lead the Ireland offensive effort against Moldova or Wales are not rated highly.
Shane Long is trusted, if not in good form, while Daryl Murphy is scoring goals for Nottingham Forest.
O’Neill has bridled before at the suggestion he is not a manager conditioned to take risks when required, and he suggested experience need not be the governing factor in selecting his teams.
‘There are players who come in who would think, “To hell with this pressure, I can deal with this”, and go forward and stick it into the net. I’ve never had a problem with putting young players into the side if I thought they could cope,’ he added.
‘So I have to take a bit of mentality into consideration. And the more that I am talking to some of these lads, and I’ll have three or four days in which to do so, I’ll gain something from that. But no, it’s finding the net, we need to find the net. We need to take a couple of chances that, despite our poor play against Georgia, we actually created.’
Some of the shots attempted by his players towards the close of the Serbia game are ricocheting around his mind still. Ireland’s attempts at an equaliser were not distinguished by composure, a failing made worse by the Serbs playing with 10 men for the final 25 minutes after Nikola Maksi- movic was sent off.
‘That’s probably a wee bit more difficult to enact than to say it, because you’re desperate to get an equalising goal and you think everybody is just going to pile in,’ he said of the need for calm.
‘But we had a couple of shots from outside the penalty area that a little bit more care should have been taken with.
‘There’s such a thing as somebody who has a very, very good shot, like Conor Hourihane for instance, excellent left foot; there’s no point in him driving one from outside the penalty box with his right foot.
‘I think that’s the time that you just (show) a wee bit more coolness. Of course, Conor is very inexperienced at international level but it is the sort of thing you’d expect and then to try and utilise the extra man by having a little bit of extra width coming in.’
Instead, Ireland were frustrated and pressure ballooned around the team ahead of these final qualifying matches. O’Neill knows what is required, and will be expected to find a way of satisfying that need. These are sombre days. Every Ireland manager comes to know them.