Wes Hoolahan the silver lining to Ireland’s injury cloud
It might seem an odd thing to say, but Ireland’s difficulty could be Ireland’s opportunity in our World Cup qualifier in Austria this evening.
On the face of it, the bad news is Ireland have had to travel to Vienna with a badly depleted squad and will go into battle against an Austrian side which, despite their stuttering start to the campaign and a few injuries of their own, can still boast some very fine players.
The good news is we already have seven points on the board and, because of the absence through injury of James McCarthy, Stephen Ward, Shane Long, Daryl Murphy, Stephen Quinn and Cyrus Christie, there may be – and most certainly should be — a place in the starting line-up for Wesley Hoolahan.
Martin O’Neill did not give Hoolahan any game time at all in our opening two qualifiers away to Serbia and at home to Georgia. And even though we somehow managed to extract a very acceptable four points from those matches, no-one could deny we were blessed to get such positive results, saved as we were by Darren Randolph and Daryl Murphy in Belgrade and Seamus Coleman’s strange goal against the skilful Georgians.
By contrast, Ireland did play well and duly earned a deserved victory in their last outing in Moldova and, even though the opposition were a poor side, I believe the main reason for our 3-1 success in that game was because Hoolahan was in the team.
I’ve said it before in these pages that, as this World Cup campaign progresses, I sense the manager wants to settle on a side which is as close as possible to the one which finished Euro 2016 on a high.
The younger element in the squad is increasingly coming to the fore — the likes of Darren Randolph, Jeff Hendrick, Robbie Brady and Shane Duffy — obliging the old guard of John O’Shea, Richard Keogh, Glenn Whelan and Hoolahan to play a secondary role. But the problem is that, so far, the younger team has struggled to replicate the level of performance they produced in the games against both Italy and the host nation in France in the summer.
Defensively, we got away with a sloppy showing against Georgia. The central defensive partnership of Duffy and Ciaran Clark had shown in the Euros, though not as a pair, their tendency to make rash decisions – like Clark’s ill-judged and badly-timed challenge on Eden Hazard in the defeat to Belgium and, in the game against France, Duffy’s decision to go for a ball when Richard Keogh was challenging Olivier Giroud, leaving Antoine Griezmann to avail of a gaping hole in the middle to score the winner.
For the first home game of this World Cup campaign, O’Neill decided to partner them in the game in Dublin against Georgia, and presumably the fact Ireland kept a clean sheet that night, was the reason he stuck with them away to Moldova. But, in Chisinau, they contrived to concede a goal on the stroke of half-time which, no matter how you analyse it, was simply amateurish in the extreme – and that’s being kind. Now a much bigger test lies ahead in Vienna for Duffy and Clark, in the form of Austrian forwards of the calibre of Marc Janko and Marko Arnautovic. And, supporting those two, there’s also the creative and attacking threat provided by David Alaba, who we know well, and Austria’s playmaking captain, Julian Baumgartlinger.
There’s no doubt the Irish pair have commitment and toughness in abundance but their track record of making judgement errors suggests that it will a white-knuckle ride in the Ernst Happel stadium this evening.
In the absence of Stephen Ward, I expect Robbie Brady to revert to left-back where he has, of course, played many times, and with Brady withdrawn from midifield and James McCarthy also unavailable, that should mean Harry Arter will get to make his competitive debut for Ireland. And as a ball-playing midfielder who is prepared to take responsibility to develop the play, I would regard the Bournemouth man’s selection as a positive for us.
In my view, the midfield should be Jeff Hendrick, Glenn Whelan, Harry Arter and, now that he appears to have overcome his injury problem, James McClean, with Hoolahan to link it all up and Jon Walters to lead the line on his own. The irony is, had everyone been fit, it’s likely that against a team like Austria, Martin would have left Hoolahan on the bench.
In truth, Hoolahan ought always to be in the side purely on merit. The convincing evidence is right there in front of Martin’s eyes. Wes simply makes everybody else in the Irish team play better and, because they know they can give him the ball, his mere presence takes the pressure off his team mates. Nor is it just about his proven ability to deliver the kind of telling pass which put Shane Long in to score against Moldova or the beautifully flighted cross for Robbie Brady’s goal against Italy or, for that matter, his own exquisite finish in the 1-1 draw with Sweden. Less obvious but no less important to Ireland doing well, in my opinion, is that when the Norwich playmaker is in the team, Seamus Coleman is much more influential and effective, because he can time his runs when Wes puts his foot on the ball.
So, surely, Martin has to play the gifted Dubliner tonight. In what is a tight qualifying group, this is a hugely important game for both sides. The fact Austria lost away to Serbia means if Ireland could get a draw it would be a great point in the bigger scheme of things, one whose true value would become even clearer the closer the group gets to its conclusion.
But, with the visitors disrupted by injury and the hosts with a point to prove, I do regard this as our toughest test so far.
And, for all those reasons, I would take a point right now without any hesitation whatsoever.
