With the last game of the qualifiers upon us, Ireland will be looking for a good result to round off the campaign.
Far beyond that though, this game sees a new look team play in front of a home crowd that for the first time in a long time might be looking forward to seeing the Boys in Green.
The team lineup
There were promising signs on Friday despite the result, and we certainly looked a little bit better when we managed to get the ball, in particular for a period at the start of the second half. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the same lineup start again, but Noel King seems to want to play a bit more with the ball on the ground, and might put Wes Hoolahan or Andy Reid in the fold. Or maybe both, King has shown that he’s pretty unpredictable so far.
It wouldn’t be unfair to see Anthony Stokes make way for someone else up front, as even though he put in a shift and got in to some decent positions, he struggled to get his head up an pick out a pass, and wasted some very good positions and opportunities because he insisted on going for goal instead of trying to find a team mate in space. That’s frustrating not only for the manager, but also for the players who made up the ground to get in to position to support him.
Win at all costs
While our squad has gone through quite a bit of change since, from the manager right through to the panel of players, the side still need a win to ensure that they don’t slip further down the UEFA coefficient rankings and end up in a much tougher situation for qualification next time around.
Even at that, we still need a few favours from other places, and having slipped won to 21st over the weekend (we were overtaken by Slovenia and Turkey), we’ll need to get up to 19 to avoid ending up in the fourth pot and getting three very difficult teams.
The crowd should be behind the team meaning the atmosphere will be better than it has been in a while, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. King will set his team out not to slip up on a night when we’re all expecting a win, not only because of the rankings dilemma, but also to avoid being a manager who ended up with his only two games in charge of the senior national side ending in defeat.
We don’t want a repeat of the last fixture
Whether it was fatigue from the Euros or the fact that Ireland may have underestimated their opponents, we most certainly got out of jail in the Astana Arena last time with a late goal from Kevin Doyle and a penalty from Robbie Keane. They all count, as they say, but this one was particularly ugly, and continued the slow demise of Giovanni Trapattoni.
Their domestic league is stronger than we might think, and a few of their players have Champions League experience with Shakhter Karagandy, something which currently the Ireland squad cannot claim to have. That’s not to say that Ireland shouldn’t be able to get a result at home against a team that are below us in the group, but there is definitely a danger with a lot of new faces and little time to gel that the squad could be caught off guard, and suffered a pretty embarrassing end to a campaign that has already had its fair share of disappointments.
Of course, you can also keep an eye out for the national anthem, which we don’t think will be sung by Borat this time…
http://youtu.be/ZLa65o1nok8
