Fear not a factor as Ireland striker Callum Robinson contemplates playoff picture

After getting off the mark in the Premier League this season, West Brom striker confident ahead of Slovakia clash 

Callum Robinson: "Every attacker would say they want to be the one scoring goals but when you get to these nights I'd take one off the shin, the defender. It doesn't matter, to be honest, once it gets over the line.” Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

The dye has been cast. The Republic of Ireland intend to play some football when they face Slovakia in Thursday's Euro 2020 playoff. the question is whether that will make them any more adept at putting the ball in the opposition's net.

The team's struggles in front of goal were all too obvious in a qualifying group that saw Mick McCarthy's bid fall well short and there are few in Stephen Kenny's ranks with anything like a real pedigree at this level when it comes to rectifying it.

Shane Long has done it 17 times for his country, but his last came in a World Cup qualifier in Chisenau four years ago. James McClean has ten goals for his country but seems unlikely to figure prominently this week. Robbie Brady has eight but his only strike since 2016 was against Gibraltar.

Callum Robinson has only one to his credit so far, in the friendly against New Zealand last November, but he is a rarity right now: a bona fida Irish No.9 with a Premier League team. He has also scored three times, two of them against Chelsea, for West Brom this season.

Kenny touched on this in the last week, explaining how he had all but pegged Robinson as a winger in a front three but how this recent turn of events has given pause for new thought. Robinson is happy to be an option across the front line but he wouldn't say no to a central role against the Slovaks.

“I would definitely say yeah,” he explained last night. “Every attacker would say they want to be the one scoring goals but when you get to these nights I'd take one off the shin, the defender. It doesn't matter, to be honest, once it gets over the line.”

That double strike against Chelsea came in a 3-3 draw and, as a scoreline, it was very much in keeping with a trend for high-scoring games that some believe is directly attributable to the lack of crowds and abnormal atmosphere inside grounds.

Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur putting a combined total of 13 past Liverpool and Manchester United on Sunday was the apotheosis of that but Robinson isn't so sure that this madness will transfer across to the international game.

“With international football, I always find it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit tactical, there is more quality, so you know you’ve got to have more quality to break us down. We know the quality that Slovakia will have. It will be a lot different.”

And in more ways than one.

Robinson, who played an hour of West Brom's defeat to Southampton on Sunday, was one of the many who did no more than a recovery session in Abbotstown yesterday. Others with less game time under their belts did a more complete training session.

Among them was Jack Byrne, who seems to be fully recovered from the groin injury he picked up with Shamrock Rovers against Sligo Rovers on Friday, as well as Cyrus Christie and Kevin Long who have been called up in place of the injured Seamus Coleman and Darragh Lenihan.

Harry Arter was still in the UK yesterday receiving a scan on the thigh issue he suffered playing with Nottingham Forest on Saturday. Aaron Connolly also took a back seat in Dublin today but that was said to be for load management reasons.

Callum O'Dowda has been another doubt due to a groin issue picked up in the game against Finland last month. The Bristol City player hasn't played since but was in Dublin yesterday and looks set to feature at some point in this three-game international break.

The team flies out to Bratislava today after a morning session and the painfully tight window in which Kenny is working is such that the team had yet to have a full team meeting as of yesterday evening as so many had been so late into camp after club games.

It's far from ideal but then Slovakia have had their own issues and Robinson believes the games against Bulgaria and Finland have prepped Ireland for what the new manager wants from them even if he, for one, was no more than 75% fit at that point in the pre-season.

He admits to a level of anxiousness about flying between the UK, Ireland, Slovakia and Finland in these strange times but there is a determination to raise the nation's spirits and a recognition that they dispel any doubts or fears from their minds.

“No fear. Personally, I never fear anyone, really, and we're like that as a group. We know we've got a lot of quality. It was disappointing to lose against Finland, but you could see little things in the game where we're trying to get to what the manager wants.

“We're getting there, but it was obviously harder last month because we weren't as fit as we are now,” he stressed. “I'm really positive going into Thursday and I back all the lads and everyone whose involved here."