Players have to throw shackles off and express themselves

ANALYSIS:THERE WASN'T anything in that performance against Slovakia on Friday that showed me we're capable of going to Russia and winning – and I don't think anything else will be good enough. We'll struggle to progress to the play-offs if we don't win this game.

The one hope we have is that we’ve been here before, and often when we’ve come up against better sides we’ve produced big performances, Paris being the most obvious example. Everything seems to go up a notch when we go in as underdogs.

Whether that’s down to the players or the manager, I’m not sure, but it’s almost as if the players take it in to their own hands, throw the shackles off. Maybe they’ll do that again today, but we’re grasping at things in the past. I’d be worried for us.

When you look at the games in the group so far, you can’t see where that big performance will come from. We haven’t been good enough. At home especially we’ve been very poor. That’s largely been down to the fact that we’ve had just one plan, and when that’s been nullified we haven’t been able to change it.

What worries me too is that we got overrun by Slovakia’s three-man midfield on Friday and again Giovanni Trapattoni has gone for a 4-4-2 against Russia, which will leave us down a body in the middle of the park.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Robbie Keane or Kevin Doyle dropping deep to make that extra man in the middle, but at some stage we’re going to have to go at them.

Much has been made of our six successive clean sheets, but we’re not attacking teams and leaving ourselves open. Trapattoni deserves credit because we have been tight defensively, and that’s the reason we’re still in it, but that’s all very well – you have to try to win games.

What we got on Friday was a flat performance with no real urgency to win the game up until the last 10 minutes.

And I certainly don’t see us going gung-ho for a win today. It’ll be the same thing, we’ll try to keep it tight, stay strong defensively, and try to nick a goal on the break or from a set-piece. But if we concede a goal, then you’d worry for them. No plan B.

That’s why I’m surprised we don’t have the likes of Wesley Hoolahan, Jon Walters or Leon Best on the bench, all good players playing week in, week out in the Premier League and players who can offer you something a little different. As it is, our subs’ bench, should things need to be changed during the game, really doesn’t offer the manager anything different.

I’d like to see Ireland on the front foot a bit more; you have to give the players some belief and enthusiasm and tell them they can go there and win.

We need Kevin Doyle back to his best too. I think being left out of the original team last week knocked the stuffing out of him. I just hope he’s recovered from that and his pride and confidence haven’t taken too much of a battering. He just looked devastated to me on Friday. He’d been left out for no apparent reason.

When Kevin Doyle is fit, he’s got to play.

Another consideration is the artificial pitch in Moscow. I was never a fan of Dundalk’s pitch, but Bohemians played on one a couple of seasons ago in Salzburg where the ball moved around quite well – in fairness to Dundalk they wouldn’t have had the kind of watering system Salzburg have. It was very good quality and I’d assume the one in Moscow is too.

But still, there’s an obvious and unfair advantage when you’re used to an Astro pitch – the whole game changes, the bounce of the ball, the run of the ball.

Football should be played on grass, as far as I’m concerned.

We just have to hope that the pitch isn’t a factor, and we just have to hope we get one of those big performances from the team.

I don’t think the players are as bad as they’ve looked in the last few games, they just haven’t been allowed express themselves. The manager just has to trust them a little bit more. They know it’s the last-chance saloon, so maybe they’ll remove the shackles themselves.

The way the team is set up, there’s no doubt it’s more suited to playing away from home.

We’ll hope, then, that we see a vastly improved display from the one against Slovakia.

If we don’t, then I wouldn’t hold out much hope.