Lawrence in the limelight

JERMAINE PENNANT and Jamie O’Hara may want to give Fabio Capello a call after it was made abundantly clear last night that neither player would ever find a particularly warm welcome in an Irish dressing room.

Both Pennant and O’Hara have floated an emerald kite in the recent past whilst stating a first preference to represent the Three Lions and such talk clearly hasn’t gone down well with members of Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad.

“The only thing I know upsets us, if you like, is when people are trying to juggle between England and Ireland,” said Liam Lawrence at the team‘s Dublin HQ. “That’s the only issue really there and it is not just me that’s saying that.

He added: “We honestly don’t dislike these people. It is just some of the comments that these people come out with when they’re saying they are juggling between Ireland and England. You just don’t do it, do you?”

Public procrastination aside, Trapattoni was dismissive when asked about using Pennant, while O’Hara’s latest utterances have merely been to repeat his preference for wearing the white rather than the green.

Still, the act of declaring allegiance to countries aside from that of a player’s birth remains a touchy subject, not least in Ireland since the days when Jack Charlton came on board as manager 25 years ago.

Lawrence is perhaps more attuned to such a delicate matter than some of his squad colleagues this week given he is an English-born member of the squad who qualifies for Ireland through his grandfather, Jimmy Diggins from Killarney.

“What with the accent and all the rest of it and being born over there? Yeah, maybe yeah. I was nervous if you like when I first came over and I know it is always in the back of people’s minds, things like that.”

Like most of the British-born players who have followed the trailblazing steps of Shay Brennan in representing the Republic, Lawrence has worked his way into the public’s affections through his actions rather than words.

He first came to the FAI’s attention when former goalkeeper Seamus McDonagh tipped off then-U21 manager Don Givens to his eligibility eight years ago but he was never picked and another six years passed before his senior bow.

Eleven more caps have been earned since, all of them wide on the right, but he expressed an interest last night in auditioning for a role in central midfield, which remains his preferred habitat.

He played there for Portsmouth for two months before getting injured and has filled the hole behind a front man as well and, as October’s 3-2 defeat to Russia suggests, Ireland could do with some competition in the middle of the park.

Or so popular opinion would have it.

Glenn Whelan, Darron Gibson and Keith Andrews all have their detractors but there is also a general acceptance that they are playing in the straitjacket that is the Italian manager’s rigid system.

Lawrence’s take on that is interesting.

“Sometimes it doesn’t just boil down to what they’re told to do. Formations are quite a big thing. Even at Portsmouth, we play 4-4-2 and we were getting outplayed by teams that weren’t as good as us because of the formation they played.

“They were more in the middle. The Russia game was a prime example of that. The first 50 minutes we played 4-4-2 and got the runaround a little bit. When we changed we nearly got back in the game. Sometimes, it’s done well for us.”

Three-nil down, Trapattoni made three — for him — early substitutions and played a variation of 4-3-3 in that madcap last half-hour.

It was the first time he had deviated from his tried and trusted 4-4-2.

An argument for more flexibility, then?

“I think sometimes, the old cliché, horses for courses, certain formations against certain teams but now a lot of teams are playing with the three in the middle and the two wide and the one up front.

“You just get outnumbered, it’s as simple as that and with the quality that is in international football, when you get outnumbered in the middle, it’s the engine room and the main part of the field, so…”

It isn’t just international football. Virtually every team Lawrence has faced with Portsmouth in the Championship this season has adopted the 4-5-1 but he clammed up when asked if he could foresee a day when Ireland would follow suit.

“You lot are going to get me in trouble here,” he said with a nervous laugh.

“At least I’m honest,” he added when the interview came to an end.

He is that.