The main thing that's changed is the pressure

Republic of Ireland v Albania/Preview: It's always interesting to note how quickly the landscape can change for a manager and his football team.

Just a few short months ago Brian Kerr was taking over a side whose chances of qualifying for next year's finals of the European Championship in Portugal had been all but written off after defeats by Russia and Switzerland.

Expectations had been reduced almost to zero and there was little or no pressure on him as he took over the reins from Mick McCarthy.

We're still only half way through this group, but a win and a draw away, combined with a succession of favourable results elsewhere, have put Ireland right back in the hunt for a place at Euro 2004.

That's the upside. The downside is that now Kerr is under a bit of pressure. Suddenly, his team needs a win and the public very much expects that they'll get it.

It's an expectation that I have to say I share. The performance in Tirana a couple of months back wasn't the greatest that I've ever seen from an Irish team, but it has to be judged in the context of what had gone a few days before that in Tbilisi.

Ireland had given so much against the Georgians that they were always going to be tired when it came to play Albania for the first time.

Given the way things have gone for our main Group 10 rivals on their travels to the same two countries, the four points Kerr and his players brought back home with them ended up looking like a fairly decent haul.

So it appears there is everything to play for over the second half of the campaign and though the Swiss take on Russia this evening knowing that a win will put them in a tremendously strong position, even automatic qualification is still there to be aimed for by the Irish.

What Kerr has to decide is how, now that his team are back in contention, he is going to approach the task of making up the remaining lost ground.

The team have to win these two games and if they can do that there is no good reason to doubt they can beat what has been shown since that awful night in Moscow last September to be a very ordinary Russian side.

To date he has been very clever in the way he has handled the players and the team's approach to games. He has kept doing things in very much the way McCarthy did, but there have been subtle changes in personnel and the way they are asked to apply themselves.

Last time out he brought things on another notch by experimenting with Damien Duff behind the front two and I was impressed by the results, but it seems like a bit of a leap to take the same sort of approach against a side like Albania when they look to be the sort of team that would be more vulnerable out on the flanks.

Playing him there would allow you to partner Robbie Keane with either Gary Doherty or David Connolly, but then I just can't see Kerr breaking up the partnership of Duff and Keane and sacrificing the threat posed by having natural width on both the left and right.

If Matt Holland and Mark Kinsella can provide sufficient protection in the centre, the presence of two wide men allows a team to effectively deploy a four-man attack when in possession.

For my money it would be the way to start against the Albanians with Duff's ability to revert to the "hole" or the left wing later in the game providing options that could be fallen back upon depending on how the game progresses.

Elsewhere in the team I can't see much changing either. I've never been one of Gary Breen's greatest fans, but the fact is he hasn't done anything wrong for Ireland and so there certainly doesn't seem to be much reason to drop him.

If Steve Finnan had been fit I would have played him at left back which, with John O'Shea, would have provided you with a central defender with a real talent for playing the ball out from the back.

As it is, I can't see why Kerr would change anything from the back four that played in the two away competitive games and that means, with both O'Shea and Ian Harte available for the first time since the new manager took over, the Leeds United defender will lose out.

Basically, though, I don't think it makes much difference who Kerr plays at the back. It's a game we have to win and a win is clearly what we'll go for.

In those sort of circumstances, there is always the chance that any team can grab a freak goal against you and perhaps even cause a major upset, but, in all honesty, Albania's potential to cause Ireland any real problems looks extremely limited to me.

The Irish team's ability to pick themselves up after the game and then do it all again against the Georgians on Wednesday may prove the toughest test for Kerr's men.

(In an interview with Emmet Malone)