Ireland: The 25th best team in Europe
To put it another way: after Saturday’s result, qualification is still possible but not, you would have to say, probable.
One big result – either beating Germany or Poland – and hoping Scotland slip up somewhere, possibly in Georgia, now seems to be our best hope of salvation. But would I be optimistic that we can make the most of that slim chance? No.
I did think it was a promising first half performance by Ireland on Saturday albeit, as I predicted here on the morning of the game, mainly of the route one variety, with the ball going up to Daryl Murphy at almost every opportunity.
Martin O’Neill seems to have realised that the midfield players he has are just not good enough to play out from the back. They don’t want to accept that responsibility; they are more comfortable playing the ball sideways rather than forward. The fact of the matter is that Ireland simply don’t have a Roy Keane or Graeme Souness -type of player to enable us to dictate games from the middle of the park.
There was one occasion on Saturday, for example, where Glenn Whelan had 30 yards to turn into but instead opted to play the ball back to his centre-backs. But you can hardly criticise Whelan and Jeff Hendrick for not being something else. Both are, essentially, continuity players, whereas James McCarthy is a slightly different case since we have seen him be much more positive and effective when playing for Everton.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember him making any significant contribution on Saturday, apart from a very silly tackle on Scott Brown and then leading with his elbow and catching Russell Martin. I’ve seen red cards given for that kind of challenge and I think he was very fortunate to stay on the pitch. Otherwise, I thought it was the usual safety-first passing from him, as it was from Whelan and Hendrick. If you have three midfielders, ideally you would have two – but, at the very least, one – who can switch the play, open the game up and get beyond the opposition with a clever ball to the front men or by finding Wes Hoolahan when he is taking up those central positions. But I can’t honestly remember any one of the three of them giving a pass like that against Scotland.
What we did do well in that first half was, whenever the ball was knocked down by Murphy or Walters or when the same two prevented the Scots from getting good clearances, we were first to the dropping ball. Jeff Hendrick, Wes Hoolahan and the full-backs did well in that regard, with the result that we got firmly on the front foot and were giving Scotland real problems.
I thought Robbie Brady and Seamus Coleman did particularly well in the first 45 too. They were playing a lot of the game in the Scottish half and, in general, the effect was that Ireland had their opponents well pinned back.
Scotland barely troubled us at the other end, so this was a really good first half for us if, again, a la Jack Charlton or a la Giovanni Trapattoni. Route One is not the football I like but, sometimes, it’s all about horses for courses. And the approach paid off with that goal just before the break, even if there was a large helping of good fortune involved in the official failing to spot that Jon Walters was offside when he knocked home the rebound from Murphy’s header.
Murphy had done well to win the corner in the first place before then powering the header against Marshall that the keeper couldn’t handle. But it wasn’t only his part in the goal which, I felt, vindicated Martin O’Neill’s surprise decision to start with the Ipswich man at the expense of opting for the pace of Shane Long. I also think Murphy was unlucky in the second half when Hoolahan put him through with a great little ball. Murphy struck it well but, this time, the Scottish keeper was fortunate to get a foot out to make the save.
Over the course of the whole game, I thought Murphy gave a real good account of himself and, in my book, should have been kept on the pitch until the final whistle rather than being substituted in the 80th minute.
It was Shane Long who replaced him then and, on top of the Southampton man’s failure to make the starting 11, what his late arrival off the bench tells me is that Martin O’Neill just doesn’t have any real belief or confidence in him, even though he is a Premier League striker.
The game’s big turning point was clearly the early concession of an equaliser. In the studio on RTÉ we had spoken during the break about the importance at the start of the second half of being vigilant and ensuring that, above all else, we did not let the opposition back into the game. And, yes, as with our goal, there was a large helping of luck for theirs, as Shaun Maloney’s shot took a big deflection off John O’Shea.
However, that said, I felt we were culpable in the build-up in allowing them to string a few passes together around the edge of the box without being quick enough to close them down, before Glenn Whelan got done in a one-two, after which, well, fortune chose to smile on them rather than us.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Scotland found their feet after that for the first time in the game. Drawing on the boost in confidence the goal gave them, they began to pass the ball with more precision and, with Ikechi Anya coming on, they had better shape as well as more of a threat on the left flank. As a result, Coleman was kept quieter and we increasingly resorted to mainly hopeful stuff in an unconvincing effort to regain the initiative.
The exception to that was when Wes Hoolahan got on the ball, which is why I could not understand Martin’s decision to take him off with about 15 minutes left to play. With Ireland desperately needing the win, the better and bolder move would have been to take Hendrick or McCarthy or maybe Walters off. Robbie Keane, who came on for Wes, is actually probably better with Wes in the team, because the latter’s creativity means he’s the one most likely to slip a pass through to Robbie in the box. But we went, as I say, for the hopeful route rather than persevering with Wes. And it didn’t pay off.
You would have to say that it is in hope, rather than expectation, that our route to the finals next summer now lie. But I wouldn’t be dismissing our chances completely. It might seem ironic but, precisely because the campaign is being written off by the media, that can sometimes stimulate and galvanise a team to do something extraordinary.
The worrying thing is that 18 months into Martin O’Neill’s tenure, we neither have a settled team nor a settled way of playing. Scotland, in comparison, have a clear way of playing and an understanding of what Gordon Strachan wants.
For us, a real big failing so far in this campaign is that we haven’t been able to keep a clean sheet, with the exception of the virtually meaningless game against Gibraltar. For all the criticisms of Trapattoni in terms of his not playing the kind of football people wanted to see, he got the job done when it came to our defence. People used to mock him for repeatedly stressing attention to little details. But if you were to analyse what’s gone wrong in this campaign with a fine-tooth comb, you’d find that precisely that kind of attention to the little detail has been lacking. As an example: Trap really got across to the players how important it was not to give silly free kicks away. And, if you remember, it was Hendrick needlessly giving away a free kick in Glasgow which led to the corner from which Scotland got their match-winning goal.
Obviously, the loss of Richard Dunne as the rock in the Irish defence has been a blow but the deeper problem has less to do with the absence of one player than continuing frailties in terms of mentality, temperament and concentration.
A lot of people will look at the job Michael O’Neill is doing with Northern Ireland and use that as an additional stick with which to beat his namesake Martin. But I think the comparison is unfair. The reality is that Martin is working with a very average squad in what has turned out to be a very difficult group. Whereas I think Michael’s success has a lot to do with the weakness of other teams in their group, like Greece, Finland, the Faroe Islands and even Hungary.
In our group, Germany and Poland clearly have the bulk of the most talented players after which it’s a toss of a coin between Scotland and ourselves. And, if truth be told, Gordon Strachan has got more out of his team than Martin has got out of ours.
Because football is football, and always retains the capacity to surprise, it’s not yet time to abandon all hope of Ireland qualifying for Euro 2016. But if we don’t make it to these newly expanded finals, then it will probably be because of one uncomfortable but unavoidable truth: there are 24 teams in Europe that are better than us.
