The shock of the familiar

So it’s business as usual, as in business unusual, across the Irish Sea, the fledgling new Premier League season having already sent the back pages into overdrive with LVG’s nightmare start at Old Trafford, Liverpool prepared to swap frying pan for fire as Balotelli replaces Suarez and, simply stinking the whole place out, the Malky Mackay scandal.

Meanwhile, back on this side of the water, it’s business as usual as in, well, business as usual, Martin O’Neill unveiling a first Euros qualifying squad which, with just a couple of obvious exceptions, could have been picked at any point by Giovanni Trapattoni during his last unhappy campaign in charge. And even the most obvious of those exceptions – Andy Reid – could hardly be described as a fresh face on the Irish scene.

Just short of 10 months after the appointment of O’Neill and Roy Keane was hailed in many quarters as the solution to all the problems which had generally been attributed to Trap, the prevailing sense of status quo around the Irish squad hardly chimes with the initial widespread belief that, with the changing of the managerial guard, we were all set to escape the age of Italian austerity and, with one bound, soar through qualifying to take our rightful place on the playing fields of France in two years’ time.