Spartak's McGeady well-placed to provide some intelligence

SOCCER:PLAYING HIS football with Spartak Moscow has left Aiden McGeady well placed to provide Giovanni Trapattoni with a good deal of intelligence, both on key members of the Macedonia side Ireland will face Saturday night and, of course, the Russian one that still represents the greatest obstacle to qualification for the European Championship finals.

The former Celtic winger admits, however, the Italian is unlikely to be relying on him as he formulates his game-plans for what are crucial qualifying games.

“He’s a very experienced coach so I’m not 100 per cent sure if he’ll be taking my opinions into consideration,” he says. “If he wants to know things, then of course I’ll tell him but he’s the type of coach that he’ll know more than me, he’ll have people watching games and players and things like that, and videos. Like I said, I’d imagine he’d probably know more than me.”

The defeat by Russia seriously dented Ireland qualification hopes but other results have gone the team’s way and McGeady believes he and his team-mates need to take their chances now in order to be challenging during the latter part of what is a very close race.

“Every qualifying game is a tough game. If you just look at the table that we’re in, we’ve got Russia, who are top just now by two points, there’s ourselves, Armenia, who are unexpectedly up there, and Slovakia as well so it’s a very, very tight group.

“Macedonia are still going to be a tough game but every qualifying game is and it’s important for us to start well after the two bad results we had against Russia and Slovakia. We really have to build on this bit of luck we’ve got. Results went our way and it has put us in a good position in the table and we’ve got to build on that now.

The visit to Moscow in the autumn will be a key fixture as long as the Irish team can win games like this week’s one against Macedonia and McGeady insists with the top seeds still to play, he and the rest of Trapattoni’s men have to remember that their fate lies in their own hands.

“They (the Russians) are probably the team most expected to go through and they probably have the strongest squad I’d say out of anyone. I’d imagine everyone expects them to go through but it’s down to us to make sure that we do.”