O’Neill’s faith pays as he gets best out of McGeady

It was over a decade ago when this reporter first had the opportunity to come across Aiden McGeady at a routine press engagement ahead of a fixture for the Irish U21 side for which he was appearing at the time.

One of the hotels surrounding Dublin Airport was team HQ. Not the shortest of journeys. Nor, on that occasion, the most profitable. McGeady delivered a few monosyllabic words mumbled incoherently in an impenetrable Glasgow accent.

He was just breaking into Celtic’s first team under Martin O’Neill at the time and his decision to ignore the belated ‘come hithers’ of the Scottish Football Association had already marked him out as a man to watch in green.

Over a decade on, and the accent has been distilled enough to make his words decipherable, though there is no danger of mistaking him for anything but a native of ‘Glasgee’, and he has invariably been worth listening to.

Not for the first time, he sat down this week with a group of Irish journalists before a senior international and found himself asking and speaking about his less than stellar career in an Irish jersey.

It’s a subject that rarely fails to make him bristle and he talked about how on some occasions he has found himself reading the paper at Dublin Airport after a performance he found to be perfectly satisfactory, only to see that the journos felt differently.

The curse of such high expectations, perhaps.

Whatever, he admits himself that, after 10 years, over 60 appearances and just three goals, he could do better for Ireland. At 28, he is in the period commonly held to be an outfield player’s peak. McGeady’s future needs to be now.

Ireland need his future to be now, too.

Much has been said and written about the perceived weakness of the team in central midfield and many are the hands that have been wrung about the failure of Kevin Doyle and Shane Long to threaten Robbie Keane’s mantle as goalscorer-in-chief.

Yet an Irish team that persists with the quaint formation of 4-4-2 or its not-so-distant cousin of 4-4-1-1 has always been, and will continue to be, heavily reliant on the men employed in the midfield’s wide channels for its offensive threat.

Much was made of McGeady’s past with O’Neill when the Derry man succeeded Giovanni Trapattoni. It was O’Neill who chucked him in as a raw colt with Celtic, for whom he scored on his debut, away to Hearts, after just 17 minutes.

The new manager has again shown faith.

McGeady has started all four of O’Neill’s games in charge so far and, for what it is worth, James McClean and Wes Hoolahan have both featured from the off in the three of those to be played at the Aviva Stadium.

All three had their moments last night but McGeady was the standout.

The Everton player used what looked like a licence to roam to good affect, creating a string of chances from the right, the left and the first — for Shane Long – via a ball through the middle that, it must be said, was lucky to find his man.

It was the same two minutes later when an attempted cross skimmed off the head of the first defender but ended with Stephen Ward whizzing an effort just wide. The delivery improved after that and the chances kept on coming.

His Ronaldo step over before the cross that saw McClean’s shot saved by Onur Recap Kivrak was exceptional and if his influence declined in his 20 minutes on the field after the interval, that was merely being consistent with the occasions.

His final ball remains at times frustrating but then footballers at the very elite level have always found it so: witness the Atletico Madrid player who failed to beat the first defender with three successive efforts in Saturday’s Champions League final.

McGeady’s success rate under O’Neill this last few months is better: three positive performances and only one rather anonymous effort against Poland. Promising signs in that, at least, as Ireland decamp for Britain and the USA.