Are we really in a better place with O'Neill instead of Trap?

In football, there is an infinite number of reasons why a manager can be asked to pack his bags, but the bottom line when the new man is hired is always the same: do better than the last guy.

Sometimes that isn’t near enough to stave off the chop, but it’s not a bad starting point as we approach a four-month international hibernation which allows us to look back on Martin O’Neill’s first year after Giovanni Trapattoni.

O’Neill would say that things aren’t half bad. In fact, that’s more or less what he said at Monday’s pre-match press conference when, clearly exasperated by what he believed to be the pessimistic tone of the questioning, he made the case for the defence.