Kilbane sticking with Toffees
Prompted by a shortage of options in midfield, the London club made an initial bid of £750,000 for Kilbane but the 29-year old has indicated his desire to remain on Merseyside where Everton have enjoyed a hugely encouraging start to the season.
“I spoke with the manager (David Moyes) in the summer and that’s it,” said Kilbane at the Irish team hotel yesterday.
“I suppose what is going on now is just paper talk and I want to just stay at Everton and see how it goes there. He signed a couple of players, Jo Lescott and Andy Johnson have come in and they have given us a bit of a lift. Everyone is on their game at the moment and that’s why we have started the season so well.”
There has been talk of Fulham increasing their offer, but whatever the outcome, Kilbane isn’t the only member of Steve Staunton’s squad anxiously waiting on news ahead of the window’s closure tonight.
Andy O’Brien only heard about a possible summer move to Birmingham City in the papers some weeks ago when the deal fell through and the arrival of Sol Campbell at Fratton Park has pushed him further down the queue of Portsmouth centre-halves.
Though Pompey have matched Everton’s impressive start with two wins and a draw from the first three games, O’Brien has had to watch from the periphery.
“I’m not worrying too much about it,” he explained. “I’m waiting until (today) to see if anything happens. The situation is that, if a satisfactory offer came in, the club would listen to it. If that doesn’t materialise, I’ll be working hard to try and change his opinion.”
The expectation is that O’Brien will get such a chance at the weekend when he is expected to join Richard Dunne in the centre of a defence that will tackle the twin threat of Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski.
It is only a fortnight since O’Brien was part of a patchwork Irish side ravaged by the Dutch at Lansdowne Road but he dismisses that 4-0 defeat and the outcry that followed it as an irrelevance.
“It was a disappointing result but, with the greatest of respect, in friendlies we probably have as good a record as any country in the world prior to that game. We’d beaten Holland before and drawn with Brazil so friendlies, to a certain extent, are irrelevant. It’s the competitive games which we will be judged on.
“Sometimes in international football, when you have a bad result is can be months before you play your next game. Fortunately it’s been two weeks since that result and we have the opportunity to eradicate the memory and stop people from asking questions about the Holland game.
“I’m sure we’ll watch a video on various bits of defending. Steve mentioned one or two things (yesterday) morning about what he wants from set pieces because we conceded from one of them.”
Though Kilbane’s defensive skills looked anything but impressive last weekend at White Hart Lane where he was sent off for three fouls on Lee Young-Pyo, left-back isn’t entirely unfamiliar territory for him.
Having started in a very advanced role against the Dutch, he finished the game back in the left corner two weeks ago and he also found himself playing there for a spell in the 2002 World Cup second round game against Spain.
“I remember Mick McCarthy saying to me that I could make a left-back one day but I don’t know. It’s just about where certain managers see you playing long-term. I don’t know where Stan sees me playing. It’s just a case of getting in and keeping your place in the side.”
Talk of 2002 this week naturally focuses the mind on that unforgettable night in Ibaraki when Robbie Keane’s late goal kept alive Ireland’s hopes of qualification for the last 16, and a broad smile dominates Kilbane’s face when he talks of it.
“It was one of the best games I’ve played in anyway. We went behind very early in the match and we were chasing the game throughout. It was in the last ten or 15 minutes we brought big Niall on and he managed to get a little knock-down for Robbie to finish. We were all on a high after that and we went from strength to strength.”
A similar result against Joachim Loew’s World Cup semi-finalists would be welcome on Saturday night.
“It’s a tough group,” said Kilbane. “You couldn’t have picked a tougher group. The Czechs are in there as well.
“We know what the Cypriots did to us out there in Cyprus (last time). We should have lost that game.
“The Welsh will be tough and we’ve also got Slovakia who are going to be very good technically. There’s no easy game. We’ve got to try and have great home form, which is what has let us down over the last couple of campaigns.”
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