O’Neill puts the emphasis on attack

The public utterances of Giovanni Trapattoni might have had us all scratching our heads from time to time but there was always at least one moment of piercing clarity to his eve of match press conferences, with the Italian happy to name his team a good 24 hours before kick-off.

Martin O’Neill, like many other managers, prefers to keep his cards much closer to his chest — even to the stage yesterday where he declined to confirm that John O’Shea would start against Serbia tonight, despite the Sunderland man sitting right beside him at the top table in the traditional captain’s role, that seat having been left vacant by the absence of Robbie Keane.

But, assuming O’Neill intends to start with something close to his best available 11 against what will be testing opposition, it’s hardly too much of a gamble to forecast that, alongside O’Shea, lining up for the anthem will be David Forde, Seamus Coleman, Marc Wilson, James McCarthy, Glenn Whelan, Aiden McGeady and Shane Long. That being so, three positions will remain in the balance. If, as has been the case in O’Neill’s first two games as manager, Stoke’s Wilson is deployed at centre-half again, then Stephen Ward looks the obvious candidate to fill the left-back berth.