O’Neill cautious as Ireland head into ‘must win’ game

It would have taken some doing to get through the last few months without realising that it had been 25 years since Italia’ 90. Less celebrated, though, was the 20th anniversary of that scoreless draw in Liechtenstein.

Ireland were held by a mountaintop, it was said afterwards. Suffering the same fate tonight against a rock, it seems safe to say, would leave the team and everyone connected with it, in a hard place.

Martin O’Neill acknowledges that it is unquestionably a “must win” game and for all the talk of Gibraltar’s progress in the 12 months since Ireland thumped them 7-0 in Dublin, it is almost impossible to see how the visitors might manage not to take all three points again.

Their “hosts” would have enough to contend with under if they were actually at home but the Algarve stadium built for Euro 2004, but now rarely ever used, will feel a lot more familiar to the full-time professionals. Gibraltar’s cause will not be helped either by the fact that a major music festival back at home will take its toll on the number of travelling supporters.

Just a few thousand in total are expected at the game; 2,500 from Ireland, a few hundred from Gibraltar and whatever there is by way of a walk up crowd.

Still, O’Neill is careful to sound cautious. “We’ve watched them, the last game that they played against Germany, and I thought that they played very well indeed,” he said at his pre-match press conference last night. “They should really have equalised after half an hour in the game but they caused Germany some problems.

“In the second half, Germany got a whole host of goals but as a counter-attacking side rather than anything else. So Gibraltar have improved since the start of the competition.

“There is absolutely no question of that. But we are approaching the game in the manner that we should do. We have to find ways to break them down and we have to make sure that we are defensively as strong as possible . . .”

Starting line-up

O’Neill, who left Paul McShane (injured), Anthony Pilkington, Eunan O’Kane, Adam Rooney and Alex Pearce out of his final squad of 23, could start close to the same team that took the field for the 7-0 win but then he also changed as many of six of his starting line-up.

Robbie Keane certainly seems likely to be allowed the chance to add to the hat-trick he got against this opposition last time given his recent club form. Wes Hoolahan looks a probable starter too with James McClean's prospects boosted both by Aiden McGeady's ongoing fitness concerns and his performance last October when he chipped in with another two of the seven goals.

Assuming James McCarthy is fit, he will also be in from the outset.

Interesting question

Both fullbacks will almost certainly be changed but the more interesting question is whether O’Neill extends the overhaul to a change of goalkeeper. There is a pretty decent case to be made for replacing Shay Given with

Darren Randolph

for this game while the most obvious reason not to do so is simply to give the Donegal man game time ahead of the more challenging games to come.

Asked about the challenge, from his perspective, of playing minnows, Keane recalled Ireland’s close save up another mountain, San Marino. “It was probably one of the worst performances that we produced for a long time,” he said, “but in the end we managed to get the points thanks to a goal from Stephen Ireland. That’s why you have to always be cautious when you are playing these teams.

Ensure qualification

O’Neill occasionally raised the notion of Ireland taking maximum points in all four remaining games, a rather wonderful scenario that would ensure qualification. More realistically, though, he and his team will need favours from others, with Georgia potentially having a big part to play.

Assuming things do not somehow come crashing down in Faro, the team’s prospects would look a good deal brighter over Georgia by the time they fly home tonight if Kakhaber Tskhadadze’s men can even draw with Scotland in the first game of the day (6pm).

In Frankfurt, meanwhile, Germany are likely to be well up for the visit of Poland with a win over their neighbours set to send the World Champions to Glasgow with renewed focus. So far, so plausible. So perhaps it is best to resist the temptation to reflect on Ireland’s prospects against Germany and Poland next month until another day.