Holland keeps silent on move
Though Holland was making no comment, his international manager Brian Kerr stressed that the player was unaffected by transfer developments, as the national side prepared for their crucial meetings with Albania and Georgia. Kerr did admit that he welcomed the idea of his players representing clubs at the highest level.
“I think it is always better that players play at the highest level they can. It’s testing their ability. International football is special, the Champions’ League in the final stages maybe at a higher standard at times but players need to play at a good level on a regular basis to be able to survive in international football.
“But I’m not too bothered about the particular clubs fellows play for or in which division it is provided when they come for us and get their chance that they do their stuff, that’s the main thing. If they can do it when they are playing on our team is what counts.”
However, Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie claims there is still some way to go before a deal for Ipswich midfielder Holland can be completed:
“We have spoken to Ipswich about Matt. Unfortunately though we would ideally like to keep wraps on these sort of things till it’s a done deal; the news can leak from various other sources.
So yes, we have enquired but to be fair to Matt we still have to talk and agree terms with him and nothing is going to happen for at least 10 days.”
His Republic team-mate Steven Reid insists he won’t be demanding that Millwall let him go to Blackburn: “I am aware of the speculation about Blackburn wanting to sign me, but I genuinely don’t know what will happen over the summer or where I’ll be playing my football next season.
There are so many rumours at this time of year and I think everyone takes what they read and what they hear with a pinch of salt at the moment.
“I’d like to make it clear though, especially to the Millwall fans, that I have not asked to leave. I’ve been with the club my whole career and I owe everyone at the club a lot for helping me develop into an international footballer,” he told icons.com.
Reid back in the reckoning
Bill
George
STEVEN REID played himself into contention for a starting place with Ireland against Albania at Lansdowne Road on Saturday by coming through 45 minutes of a full-blown contest with Ireland’s U21 team yesterday in Dublin.
Reid, capped eight times, has never started a competitive game for Ireland but he is virtually certain to see some action against Albania with Ireland needing to score goals to keep their challenge alive.
The question for manager Brian Kerr is whether it would be more profitable to husband Reid’s energy after his long absence by again using him as sub. Ireland beat the U21 team 3-1 behind closed doors at Tolka Rovers’ ground, Cooke Park, and Kerr said: “We used 21 players and they all played half of a game with the exception of Richard Dunne, who played the full match.
“Steven Reid played 45 minutes and played well and looked fine. He was fit enough to start today and he is fit; whether his stamina is up to playing for 90 minutes is another matter. He played on the right of midfield and I was glad he played, he hasn’t played a match for eight weeks.”
Damien Duff, Robbie Keane and Reid scored the goals for Ireland; Liam Miller scored for the under-age team with a free that was deflected into the net off Kevin Kilbane.
Kerr is clearly seeking a more attacking formation as Ireland face up to matches against Albania and Georgia they simply must win if they are to recover the ground lost following defeats by Russia and Switzerland.
The manager is not one to divulge his plans, however, and he caused some consternation when he said Duff had played wide on the left-wing and Matt Holland had played for part of the game at right-back. But it is accepted Duff will play in a central position alongside or just behind Robbie Keane and Stephen Carr will definitely be at right-back. Of Duff he said: “He played outside-left; played quite well, got a very good goal. I played him wide and Matt Holland played right-back for part of the game and in the middle as well.” Bohemians’ centre-forward Glen Crowe has been ruled out of the next two matches by his knee injury and Kerr said he may call up one of the U21 squad to the senior panel after the under-age team play Albania at Flancare Park, Longford, on Friday.
The manager was pleased with the application of his squad, particularly as the clubs’ season had closed down more than two weeks ago: “The players are certainly focused” he said, “they’ve been really concentrated the last few days.
“There’s been a little bit of tension around the training which is nice.
He added “We’ve planned from a long way back, the players have known since early March what the programme was going to be, the structure of the matches, the structure of the training and when they were going to get their summer break so mentally they’ve been prepared for it.”
I hope they are well physically for it because two games together in four days is tough going but we’ll take on the first one and we’ll see how we go from there.”
Kerr also revealed that Lou Macari, the former Manchester United and Scotland star, will travel to see Switzerland play Russia on his behalf on Saturday. He continued : “Everybody has discovered, maybe to their surprise, that Albania and Georgia are good teams and I don’t think it was a huge surprise that Russia have been very good at home so far.
“They’ve had two good wins at home and I suppose everybody felt Switzerland would be decent enough as well.”
It is probably the most unusual of the groups in the qualification that at the half-way stage everybody is still in with some chance.
Kerr said that while Albania had undergone a change of manager since they played Russia last October he wondered whether the new man, Hans Peter Briegel, would change their approach to any great degree.
He said: “They had a go in the first match in Russia when they lost 4-1 and they certainly made a lot of chances in that match. “I think their approach will be similar here but whether they will go for it as much under a new manager remains to be seen.
Our approach is going to be a bit different as well but maybe Briegel’s influence on Albania will mean that they will play a little tighter, but we’ll see.”
He referred to the achievement of the team in turning the unfavourable early results around so quickly under difficult circumstances at the end of March when Ireland beat Georgia 2-1 and drew 0-0 with Albania within four days.
He said: “I would expect us to play the game at a better tempo than we did in Albania. I expect us to get about them a bit more than we did over there.
I think it was reasonable in the whole circumstances how we played after the effort in Georgia. The effort in Georgia was huge:
“Having looked back at that match closely I thought we did quite well we dealt with most of what they had really competently.
We didn’t do enough ourselves in an attacking sense but we’ll do better on Saturday and on Wednesday.”
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