It feels like a Wes Hoolahan kind of night

Far from familiarity breeding contempt, Martin O’Neill’s still fresh memory of how hard-earned were Ireland’s six points against Georgia in Euro qualifying means he has spent much of his media time in the run-up to tonight’s World Cup qualifier emphasising just how difficult a challenge he expects.

Roy Keane also waded in on the theme earlier this week, branding as “insulting” one journalist’s description of the Georgians as “a lesser team”. And when O’Neill wasn’t looking as far back as the 2-1 away and 1-0 home win en route to France to bolster his case, he was referencing the opening game of this qualifying campaign in which, in his opinion, Georgia were unlucky to again lose by a narrow margin, this time 2-1 to Austria.

All of which is well and good and, really, only to be expected. Certainly, despite a ranking of 137th in the world, the Georgians fall into the “tricky customer” category rather than the one marked “cannon fodder” and, from a manager who even attempted to talk up Gibraltar before Ireland played them for the first time, anything other than an argument against complacency would be shockingly out of character.