I prefer to have the team set in stone, says McCarthy

If there can be such a thing as an upside for Mick McCarthy in seeing four players succumb to friendly fire on the training pitch — Shane Long having now followed Alan Browne, Mark Travers and Luca Connell out of the squad since preparations for the Euro 2020 qualifiers against Denmark and Gibraltar began on the Algarve — it’s that none would have been likely to start in Copenhagen on Friday night.

Naturally, the manager expressed disappointment that a player of Long’s experience and “explosive” power and pace has been ruled out with a hamstring strain but his decision not to call up a replacement striker is confirmation he’s happy with the options he still has available.

“Well, we’ve got Didsy (David McGoldrick),” he pointed out. “Sean Maguire. Callum Robinson plays up there. We’ve also got Scott Hogan.

"I’ve got plenty to pick from so losing one, while it’s disappointing, it’s not the end of the world. That’s probably the strongest selection pool that I’ve got.”

It seems pretty safe to assume that McCarthy would be feeling something much stronger than disappointment, if not quite an end-of-the-world sensation, were he to lose any of the 11 who started against Georgia between now and kick off on Friday.

Because barring further injury setbacks or a major change in the manager’s thinking — or even the possibility that he’s playing ye olde mind games in a bid to wrongfoot his opposite number, Denmark boss Age Hareide — the signs are that, on the back of what was not just a 1-0 win but an impressive performance to boot in March in Dublin, he is ready to deploy the same team against the Danes.

One certainly felt entitled to take that interpretation yesterday from his answer to a question about whether Maguire and McGoldrick could be accommodated in a 4-2-3-1 formation.

“You’re kind of asking me bits of the team there so you’ll see on Friday,” was his instinctive first response. “I’m sorry, I’m being cagey.”

But then he reconsidered.

“I came in here the other day and I was asked about the team and I said about how well they played in the Georgia game and if you’re picking a team would you do anything differently?

“So, you know, I’m hardly being that cagey am I?”

He then went on to confirm that he definitely knows his starting XI for the Parken Stadium on Friday.

“I prefer to have the team set in stone, knowing what I’m going to play rather than humming and hawing,” he said.

“There are no knocks and niggles from those who I want to play, they’re all okay. I prefer it that way but I have options for all positions.

"And we’ll only know if they’re as good as the others if they have to play.”

The squad will train away from prying eyes today — “purely and simply” for tactical reasons, the manager said — as they intensify their preparations to face a team which, he knows, will provide by far the toughest test yet of the qualifying group.

He might want, as he says, for his own team to play on the front foot but he also knows they will have plenty of defending to do.

Told of Thomas Delaney’s cutting remark after the last time the two nations met in the same venue, when they drew 0-0 in the first leg of the 2018 World Cup play-off — “Playing Ireland is like trying to open a can of beans with your bare hands,” the midfielder complained — McCarthy chuckled and remarked: “Well, I hope it’s the same on Friday in terms of a defensive unit. That would be good, wouldn’t it?”

The manager certainly doesn’t expect the Danes’ star man, Christian Eriksen, to be carrying any kind of hangover from his disappointing Champions League final experience with Spurs into the international arena.

“I don’t think it will affect him on Friday because I’ve been in that position as a player,” said the former Ireland captain.

“You don’t play well on a Saturday but when you come and play international football, it’s a whole different thing.

"I can’t see him having too much of a hangover, he is far too much of a professional for that and far too good a player.

“He’ll be like the rest of us - he’ll want to come and have his two games, win the two games, go off on holiday and then come back refreshed for Spurs or wherever else he might be.

"We (players) might be sensitive to criticism, but we are not that sensitive to winning and losing games.

“From one game to the next we’re not, ‘Ooh, we lost’. Not at all. If we did that, we wouldn’t play.”

Meanwhile, McCarthy has backed James McClean for speaking out this week against what he sees as a failure on the part of football’s powers that be to take the abuse he suffers from the stands and on social media as seriously as they take racism against black players.

“I read the article, yes. It’s his view and I think he’s entitled to his opinion. I do think they should look at it.

"If he is being abused in that way, then it should be treated like any other form of racism or abuse. It doesn’t get treated the same way, absolutely not.”

Asked if he got abuse in England for playing for Ireland, McCarthy said: “Oh, I got abuse for lots of things, not necessarily for playing for Ireland.

“I generally got most abuse from Irish journalists, which never bothered me that much. I did. A few red faces there!

“Let me just tell you, I’m not on any social media platform now, so the whole world might be abusing me and I’m not even going to know about it until someone comes up and says, ‘Guess what so and so said’, or ‘Guess what they wrote’.

"So I don’t follow that. I don’t leave myself open to it.

“I feel for James because it’s a different era and he’s on that (social media) and they ought to be able to go on that without getting abuse.”