McClean unlikely to start

INTERNATIONAL SOCCER:JAMES McCLEAN may well have tweeted his way out of the starting line-up for tomorrow night's friendly game against Oman at Craven Cottage, with Giovanni Trapattoni revealing yesterday that while the Sunderland winger is likely to feature, he is not on course to start.

The 23-year-old was said by the Italian to have been “very apologetic,” for the tweet he sent deriding the Republic of Ireland’s performance in Astana on Friday night and expressing frustration he had not got the chance to play.

The matter, he insisted, is, like the footballer’s twitter account, now closed. However it seems that having been likely to start from the outset for this friendly, McClean is now to be passed over as Trapattoni, one suspects, seeks to avoid any suggestion he might be caving in to the impatient recent arrival.

Instead, Robbie Brady and Séamus Coleman are to be given the opportunity to work together on the right-hand side of the pitch, with the Donegalman set to start at full back.

Marc Wilson will, the manager said, get his first start on the other side of the defence, although Alex Pearce appears to have narrowly missed out on the chance to start, with Paul McShane first in line if, as seems increasingly likely, Sean St Ledger is not fit enough to partner Stephen Kelly.

Andy Keogh, James McCarthy and another debutant, David Meyler, will complete the midfield, with Shane Long and likely captain Kevin Doyle together up front and David Forde in goal.

It is, if confirmed this evening, a fairly adventurous selection by the standards of Trapattoni, who only called Pearce and Brady into the group after allowing five players – John O’Shea, Robbie Keane, Jon Walters, Glenn Whelan and Darren O’Dea – to return to their clubs on Saturday.

Inevitably, though, much attention will focus on the decision to omit McClean, whose tweet on Friday night had been seized upon by the manager’s critics as further evidence of a growing frustration with the Italian and his methods.

Aware, no doubt, of the PR disaster that taking any more draconian action against the winger would be, Trapattoni said he had got all of the players together and explained to McClean the content of the message, in which he had suggested he was “fuming” at not getting on, had been more disrespectful to his team-mates, both those who played and the others who didn’t, than it was to him.

But, he said: “We need to have patience with the young players. Sometimes they are instinctive and they say what they are thinking at that moment. The next day he was very apologetic. It’s a good lesson for him.

“Maybe I made a mistake in the selection, I make mistakes too but all players should understand that: “the manager has seen many games and maybe he sees my weaknesses as well as my strengths”. They need to be professional.

“I do too. Another manager, an English or German manager would have said take your bag and go home. I know I might need him to score a goal and if he goes home then he would not be able to score. That is football. I have other responsibilities but he must have respect for the others. His team -mates also spoke to him about it.”

Trapattoni also reacted to criticism from the pundits yesterday, primarily the comments of his long-time ally and former assistant Liam Brady, who had suggested at the weekend the players should go to the manager and tell him that the way the team plays needs to be changed.

The Italian seemed surprised but unmoved, claiming Ireland’s poor performance on Friday had been down to a number of factors: low post-Euro morale, problems chasing a game on an unfamiliar (artificial) surface and, he observed, poor movement by players who simply should have done better.

The system, he insisted, however, had not been to blame and his substitutions, moreover, had paid dividends in the end. Trapattoni’s self-belief, in other words, remains entirely undiminished by his side’s latest substandard display.

John O’Shea acknowledged that the Irish players had stood and watched the Kazakh goalscorer, Kairat Nurdauletov, conferring with Genrikh Shmidtgal immediately before the latter took the free that set the midfielder up to score. But the defence still failed moments later to remotely impede him as he rose to head home.

The defender, though, was generally adopting the same line as the manager by claiming the result more or less renders the performance insignificant and that the only thing that matters is that they are better next time out.

“We are not kidding ourselves,” he says, “it could have been very, very embarrassing for everybody involved but thankfully it’s not and it’s three points and we move on.”

Friday’s game could be regarded as fairly embarrassing for the Irish regardless of the late bout of escapology but at least O’Shea seems aware of the potential for abject humiliation that would go with defending set-pieces like that against the Germans next month.

But both men’s comments do raise the question as to whether it might have been better for those players who everyone knows Trapattoni will turn to again for the visit of Germany to be asked to stick around this week and take the opportunity to start putting things right at Craven Cottage.

As it is, Damien Duff, who has been invited to attend, might wonder just what’s been going on in the few weeks since he left.