John Fallon: Strikeforce history a salutary lesson for Evan Ferguson hype
HYPE MACHINE: Evan Ferguson of Brighton & Hove Albion shoots during the Premier League match between Brighton & Hove Albion and Arsenal. Pic: Steve Bardens/Getty Images
Any Fab Four – especially a youthful quartet – is a surefire way of creating a frenzy.
Football is no different to the music industry for clinging onto the next big thing so when a squadron of strikers dazzled for Ireland's U21s during 2019, talk grew of that great problem besetting our international team being eased.
Martin O'Neill had constantly lamented the ageing of Robbie Keane over his five-year term, magnified by a barren final 12 months when just four goals were scored in nine games.
Keane joining the staff for Mick McCarthy's brief stint the following years hardly sharpened the bluntness, for eight goals in eight qualifiers, including two against Gibraltar, continued a meagre return.
Another change of manager didn't instigate a change of fortune up top either. Following a scrambled Shane Duffy equaliser in Stephen Kenny's first game against Bulgaria, Ireland went the next seven goalless.
The giddiness that had accompanied Kenny's U21s blazing through their Euro qualification group - with Aaron Connolly, Adam Idah, Michael Obafemi and Troy Parrott as the attacking options - dissolved amid the drought.
Granted, Obafemi and Parrott were afforded their senior debuts before the new era but it would be June 2021, when the latter notched a brace against Andorra, that their potential was translated into firepower.
Eighteen months on and the appraisal isn't much better. Adam Idah was Kenny's go-to striker until injuries stunted his availability but a few glaring misses contributed to his blank column after 13 internationals. Connolly, too, is stuck on zero despite turning 23 this month and the priority for him is to resume a senior career stuck on eight caps for the past 16 months.
Obafemi and Parrott have savoured success, none more collaborative than last June against Scotland.
An exchange of passes between the pair created a second goal of a romp that had Irish fans feeling a combination not seen since Keane and Duff were being hatched.
Here was the future promised from 2019 enduring to the present; a strike partnership soldered from the academies of Southampton and Tottenham into a couple of teen Premier League debutants delivering for Ireland.
Expecting the duo to grace that club stage anytime soon was bonus territory and not a necessity for a nation scrambling for respectability within the middle ranks of the Nations League.
Parrott had reported for duty off a loan spell at League One with MK Dons while Obafemi had accepted that Swansea City and the Championship was his baseline to revive.
Events of this season, unfortunately self-inflicted, have floored the duo. Blame it on the excitement of scoring his first league goal in 13 attempts at latest loan club Preston North End but either way Parrott tore his hamstring while celebrating his breakthrough at Norwich City. Finally, 11 weeks later, he is being primed for a return.
Obafemi can resonate with hamstring trouble, only his absence at Swansea City is unrelated to his body. Like Ralph Hasenhüttl at Southampton before him, current manager Russell Martin has blamed the forward's state of mind for his exclusion. The 22-year-old last featured on November 8 and the soundbites suggest they won't stand in his way of a move again should Burnley come calling this month.
"Michael hasn't done well enough," asserted Martin about the striker who reached double-figures last term. "He had a great end to last season but he's not given us anywhere near enough this season.
"The August (transfer) thing rocked him, for sure. Some players can cope better with that than others.
"You take a step forward and then two steps back. He knows my thoughts on it and we've had really honest chats.
"Everyone expected him to pick up where he left off last year, but football is not linear.
"He's a young man living a long way from home with different things to deal with. Young men don't always get it right. We really love Mike as a character, a person, but all we can ask for from any of the lads is 100%, all in, a willingness to run for the team, and we've only seen that in glimpses."
It all sounds familiar to Connolly's issues. When a player is moving from the back pages to the front pages, action is required and the sole unknown is whether the plummet can be arrested. His latest loan stint, upcoming at Hull City, can already be deemed a crossroads.
Which brings us to another great hope in Evan Ferguson. Ironically enough, he emerged through the same path at Connolly from Brighton's system and broke his Premier League duck as a teen. For Connolly in 2019, it was Tottenham.
Just over three years later and their north London rivals Arsenal couldn't handle Ferguson on New Year's Eve.
Inevitably, the burden of becoming Keane's heir attaches to the 18-year-old, an outrageous tag considering no player from Spain, France, Italy or England has reached 68 international goals.
Kevin Doyle and Shane Long are the sole pair of Irish-born strikers to hit double figures since Keane and Niall Quinn's partnership peaked at the 2002 World Cup and they were more established at club level and in their 20s when first exposed to the ultimate level of international football.
Having a father, Barry, who experienced the other and more frequent side of top-level football by getting released from Coventry City presents Ferguson with a headstart in commonsense and perspective but the modest words he espoused during an interview in these pages before Christmas is the closest indication of him ignoring the hype machine. That approach, allied to his undoubted ability and attitude, will serve him well over the hit parade, in the UK and at home.
A dose of reality on the grand blueprint for upgrading antiquated football facilities is supplied in details of a clash between Government ministers.
The exchange, revealed in documents obtained by the under FOI, centred on a refused request for €170m of extra funding by Jack Chambers in June.
The then Junior Minister for Sport justified the 300% increase on the basis of financial difficulties such as construction inflation causing major projects to be paused.
These ventures include the Connacht Rugby Sportsgrounds, RDS Arena for Leinster Rugby and Kildare's GAA centre.
In response, Chambers' Fianna Fáil colleague Michael McGrath, then the minister for public expenditure and reform, cited advice from his officials about the budgetary pressures of "cost-of-living; Ukraine-related expenditure; Brexit; Covid; any public service pay deal; Health sector and housing needs."
Also reliant on the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF) are the proposed FAI Centre of Excellence for Munster in Glanmire and the Dalymount Park rebuild, which in its latest iteration highlighted the contingency on State aid.
Given the extra strain on the exchequer landscape since, prudence is a certainty when it comes to the pace of paying for bricks, mortar and labour.
The FAI is due to embark on its most ambitious upgrade plan over the next decade, understood to be in the ballpark of €1 billion but anticipating the opening of Department coffers, even with Leinster House powerbroker Robert Watt on their board, has to be couched against the context of a cabinet juggling its priority list amid rationed resources.
As we enter a year high in demands but low on glimmers of optimism, bar Evan Ferguson, the resurgence of Jayson Molumby at West Bromwich Albion warrants credit.
While the paucity of creativity was evident in Ireland's November matches against Norway and Malta, midfield is about more than merely dissecting defences.
Molumby has cast himself as the player best suited to the grittier side of the to-do list, snapping into tackles and generally being a nuisance for exalted opponents.
He began 2022 out of the Ireland picture, failing to get a minute against Belgium or Lithuania, but hasn't looked back since displacing Jeff Hendrick for the throttling of Scotland in June. He even claimed man-of-the-match in the Scotland rematch, despite coming out on the losing side.
Matching that consistency at club level was a different matter amid the turbulence of managerial changes at the Hawthorns but new boss Carlos Corberán has credited his Irish midfielder with steering their upturn from the drop zone to ninth in the Championship.
"It's important for every player to go onto the pitch when they're in the first XI with the mentality to compete," said Spaniard Corberán after starting the 23-year-old in the last three games – all wins, the latest coming at Reading on Monday.
"This is what Molumby is doing. He is working as an animal and that's what football demands of you."
Email: john.fallon@examiner.ie
