No need for Reid, says Trap

GIOVANNI TRAPATTONI has cited the primacy of his established system as the reason why he opted to call QPR’s Martin Rowlands into the Irish squad as a replacement for the injured Darron Gibson and, once again, ignored the increasingly persuasive claims of Sunderland’s Andy Reid.

“Andy Reid is an offensive player,” said Trapattoni, “Rowlands is a midfielder like Gibson who is missing. I saw the Sunderland Manchester United game and Andy Reid played well against John O’Shea. But at this moment we have a good enough squad with 25 or 26 players. We play well enough and get the results. Reid plays on the left now but we have McGeady, Hunt, Keogh and Lawrence in this position, players who play on the line with specific characteristics.”

Not for the first time, Trapattoni brought up Reid’s absence through injury from the manager’s inaugural training camp in Portugal as one of the reasons why he continues to miss out – even though he was subsequently included in the squad for the opening two World Cup qualifiers. Then came the celebrated falling-out between the two in the team hotel in Germany, although the manager still maintains it had nothing to do with the player’s subsequent non-selection.

“When I arrived, we went to Portugal to look at the players and understand their natural qualities,” Trapattoni said. “This player was unfortunately injured at the time, so I looked at the other players. Then we played Serbia and Colombia and we found the team we were looking for. That is how we started qualifying. I cannot keep changing. The team is solid and strong now.”

When it was put to the manager that he seems to want his covering squad players to be direct replacements for his first 11, rather than offer something different, he didn’t demur.

“It’s a fair assumption,” he said. “If I was already qualified I would give him the chance. I’m not excluding anything in the future. But now we need the result and to qualify. In the beginning, we thought of him or Stephen Ireland to play behind the front man. But we already had two good strikers, Kevin Doyle and Robbie Keane. Then we discovered Caleb Folan. We can’t chop and change now. If we were already qualified we could experiment.”