VIDEO: Three things we learned from England friendly

Gareth Maher lists three things we learned from the Ireland versus England game. 

1: The Robbie Brady experiment must be ditched

If any other country placed their record goalscorer from Under 21 level at left-back they would be ridiculed for it, yet Ireland continue to slot Robbie Brady in that position despite his lack of defensive awareness.

Brady deserves to be a starter in this team, but not in an area where his delivery, skill, and shooting cannot be fully utilised. While he wasn’t troubled too much by Raheem Sterling, it will be a different story when it’s Shaun Maloney or Marco Reus taking him on out wide.

Currently, there aren’t many options at left-back, but is Brady really the answer?

2: Scotland beware, it’s going to be direct

Two seconds into the game and Glenn Whelan launched a high ball towards Daryl Murphy to win a knock-down. There’s simply no disguising it any more, Ireland are officially a long-ball team.

That’s fine because at least O’Neill knows which way he wants to attack teams, it just becomes very predictable and it’s something that Scotland will surely be planning to set up against next weekend.

In 15 international appearances for the Republic of Ireland, Daryl Murphy still hasn't scored a single goal. pic.twitter.com/h7ZFKtZUYf

— Squawka (@Squawka) June 7, 2015

England figured it out and put two men on Murphy at every goal kick, while his strike partner David McGoldrick tried to hoover up any loose balls coming from his Ipswich Town teammate.

3: Tactically, there are no surprises

If the strategy when in possession of the ball was to be direct, then the tactical approach without it was to shut up shop.

Setting up in a traditional 4-4-2 system (in contrast to England’s modern 4-2-3-1), Ireland showed that they had worked on team shape in training as they closed down space, largely employed man-marking, and kept a high defensive line in order to squeeze England.

That is pretty much how O’Neill has set up his teams with Celtic, Aston Villa, and Sunderland, so don’t expect any surprises from the Ireland manager for the five Euro qualifiers ahead.