It’s a long time since the Nightmare in Nicosia. How about the Miracle of Moscow?

By Shane Breslin

Away days have long been the source of plenty of regret for Irish soccer supporters but for all his faults, it’s here that Giovanni Trapattoni has excelled as Irish manager.

It’s no wonder that there’s such a struggle to sell out the Aviva, as embattled Irish fans are treated to conservative, away-style performances from Trap’s Ireland on their home patch.

But if we’ve made one mistake in the three and a half years of Trapattoni’s tenure, it’s that we’ve allowed unconvincing home performances to colour our expectations of away days.

Let us deal for a moment in cold hard facts. We’ve taken as many points away from home as in Dublin in almost two full campaigns under the Mister – 16 of each in total.

Indeed, the record away from home is much better when you take into account the results of the 2010 World Cup play-off, when we lost at home to France before ‘winning’ on that fateful night in Paris.

So after a drab draw against the Slovaks the other day, would it really be so surprising for Ireland to go to Russia and do a job on the top seeds on Tuesday?

In normal circumstances – having your first XI available, say – you’d be forgiven for holding out plenty of hope. But with John O’Shea, Sean St Ledger and Shane Long ruled out, Kevin Doyle carrying a leg and Aiden McGeady only on his way back to full fitness, not to mention a concern over Shay Given at the weekend, things fall a good bit short of the optimum.

Allowing head to rule heart, there must be a fear that this is the game that Trap’s Ireland are finally exposed on their travels.

The Russians targeted our midfield specifically at the Aviva a year ago. They fielded a five-man midfield in which Andrei Arshavin was un-Arsenal-like in his excellence and Roman Shirokov, Konstantin Zyryanov and Igor Denisov greedily cornered the bulk of the possession in mesmerising triangular movements straight off the training field.

But wait a minute: they were up against Paul Green.

In that light, and despite what our football correspondent Niall Delaney wrote the other day, the combination of Glenn Whelan and Keith Andrews is a huge improvement.

Whelan and Andrews are painfully unsuited to recycling possession in a game we’re expected to win, but give them an away day against a top seed and we’re in business.

We can clutch at Damien Duff- and Robbie Keane-shaped straws. Until the arrival of the waspish Stephen Hunt six minutes from the end the other day, Duffer was the source of every moment of inspiration for Ireland. And Robbie has delivered so often for Ireland – so often in away games for Ireland – that we can keep our fingers crossed and hope for more of the same at the Luzhniki Stadium this week.

Ah hell, this could go any way. We could be embarrassed, we could lose to a pitifully unfortunate deflected second half winner, or we could pull off a miracle in Moscow.

So, heart over head, or head over heart?

Shag it, there’s damn all left for us in this country on the brink, so when it comes to sport we should dare to dream. 1-0, Robbie with the winner. That’ll do nicely.

Join us for our live Russia v Ireland blog live and updated throughout the day on Tuesday. We’ll be counting down to kick-off from mid-morning.