Sometimes you just have to go route one

Mark Lawrenson Soccer analystYes, of course Saturday was frustrating, but the bottom line is when Brian Kerr took the job if he - and we - thought we could get into the play-offs by winning our final game in the group away to Switzerland he - and we - would have taken it.

That's the only of way of looking at it now, in as positive a way as possible.

The honest truth about Saturday is that was didn't deserve to win. The Russians played well, kept possession very well, strung a lot of people across midfield, and, Damien Duff apart, we didn't have the invention, guile or creativity to break them down.

Gary Doherty came on so late we didn't even go route one, which might have caused them some problems. We just didn't create enough chances to say we deserved anything more than a point.

For the first time I was surprised by a Kerr team selection. Lee Carsley's selection on the right would have made sense to me if Colin Healy was told to get forward, but he hardly ever did during the game. I think Healy is a far better player than we saw on Saturday, he just needs four or five games under his belt. You looked at Healy, Carsley and Clinton Morrison and thought: "You three need games", because they've hardly played at all for their clubs this season - Carsley hasn't played at all.

Morrison, though, needs to play with somebody alongside him, rather than somebody playing "off" him, as Duff did on Saturday. That selection, for me, was surprising - we never created anything like a chance in the second half, and that's not like us at Lansdowne Road. We very rarely got behind the Russians, they were confident and capable enough to say "try to play through us". Also, which is a cardinal sin at this level, we gave the ball away too much, even when we were under no pressure.

Against a different opposition we might have got away with it but we were without our best striker - Robbie Keane - who gives us some invention and trickiness, so I just thought it was a day we needed something different from the other parts of the team to make light of Robbie's absence. In terms of Kerr's team selection I don't think he did that.

Carsley works hard, he gets up and down, but he's not going to create much. I thought having Carsley, Morrison and Healy involved in our attacking options was a huge "ask". I had championed Doherty's case in advance but fine, go with Morrison, but at some stage you've got to say "it's not working", and sometimes you just have to go route one, and, perhaps, Doherty was needed earlier than he was brought on in the game.

It's one of those things, if we'd gone 15 minutes after we'd scored we'd have been alright - stop them playing, take 1-0 - but we didn't defend well enough and conceded a poor goal, one they didn't have to work too hard for.

They were physical and strong, organised, neat and tidy in midfield, played well for the point, but our failure to really get at them was the most disappointing aspect of the game. Normally at home we create chances and really put teams under pressure, but you never, ever had that feeling on Saturday.

You can understand the feeling of disappointment because we'd built ourselves up, two victories would equal automatic qualification.

Our problem is we're totally reliant on the few class players we have - Duff and Keane being the obvious two - but we need the others to raise their game, every time, and compensate for the occasional absence of those players. That didn't happen on Saturday.

I thought Duff did a good job with the amount of possession he had, but there were times he was on the ball and he was just waiting for movement, for somebody running, and it wasn't there.

Next? Well, the group is complicated, but looking at the results so far I wouldn't be surprised if there was a twist in the tail. Switzerland beating Russia? Even Georgia doing something against Russia? Who knows, but I've a feeling the results to come won't be as predictable as we think.

Granted, I would much rather be in Russia's position now, but we're not finished yet.

We very rarely have two consecutive ineffective performances so I wouldn't worry too much about the Switzerland game, I know we're capable of going away from home and winning.

The draw with Russia is a setback, but we can recover from it. The only thing is we need to go to Switzerland with Keane, Duff and John O'Shea in the line-up - O'Shea even more so now that Kenny Cunningham is out. He can play anywhere in defence, with his pipe and slippers, he's that good. We'll miss Cunningham because he's a good organiser, but his loss is by no means insurmountable, we have options to replace him.

Yes, Saturday was a setback and a disappointment, but Portugal is still possible.

We can beat Switzerland, and who knows how the other results will go. That, I suspect, is all Brian Kerr could have hoped for when he took on the job.

In an interview with Mary Hannigan