Time for Irish side to emulate Roy Keane

With Kenny Cunningham and Gary Breen, missing you'll want to know who I'd pick next Saturday had I relented and agreed to be manager of the Irish soccer team - instead of retaining my job as expert on everything else. You probably think you'll have to twist my arm. Surprise! You've caught me in the right mood.

First the attack, or as I like to call it, our inoffensive cutting edge.

Robbie Keane, a modern footballer in the critical sense that he is allowed the mien of super stardom without the accomplishments, has some work to do this week. Liberals will make allowances for the turmoil which the market place has visited on a player whose stock has bobbed like a dot.com share price but this week as Robbie glumly celebrates the first anniversary of his last international goal he knows he was pauper poor on Saturday at West Ham.

His ratio of goals to international games (seven in 26 - three against Malta though!) is marginally better than David Connolly's (seven in 28) but slightly behind the peerless Richard Dunne (three in 11). For a player who was once tipped to eclipse Michael Owen that's a malignant little stat to have to carry around.

Mick McCarthy diverts the pressure always by saying the team has leaned heavily on Keane and Keane is just a kid. Mick knows though. Robbie Keane is preternaturally mature. He's good enough, old enough and well paid enough to handle the burden.

Keane has lost something. You watch him and you know he loves scoring but he keeps wandering out the field like a lost soul. Against Croatia a couple of weeks ago Damien Duff was his strike partner and they both went off foraging. They might as well have left a little sign on the penalty spot - "Back in Five Minutes." Some day Robbie will beat three top international defenders and nutmeg the goalie. For now slotting in a Niall Quinn knock-down would be sufficient.

And Quinn, what more can be said. He has shown a ruggedness in prolonging his top-flight career that astonishes anyone who stood on the North End at Highbury in the mid to late 1980s and watched his first coltish steps as a pro. We thought he'd be back in a Dublin hurling jersey in jig time but here he is, 35 and an icon.

If we can wring a heroic 60 minutes out of him on Saturday against the Netherlands we will have done well and it is to be hoped the wisdom of his works won't be wasted. Having a big lad in the box is a primitive sort of weapon easily countered except when you have a big smart guy in the box.

We need to work Niall hard because we can't afford to sit back. Our defence hasn't compiled the comedy reel of bloopers which we feared but there's time. For all the rubbish talk about this, at last, being Mick McCarthy's "lucky" campaign, the manager would hand back his four-leaf clover in exchange for a Kenny Cunningham.

When it comes to looking at our defensive capabilities these days this column usually has its hands over its face and its eyes scrunched up but here goes: Shay Given's early season Jacques Tati impression should count. Yet, if we drop him Shay might sulk and demand a transfer to Belgium. He gets the jersey.

Elsewhere it's recession and depression, doom and gloom and van Nistelrooy and Kluivert calling for foreclosure. Once we had a full-back surplus which could have got us into trouble with the EU. We've downsized. Against Croatia two weeks ago we ended up with Kevin Kilbane at left back. Now we are down to Gary Kelly, who has been supplanted at Leeds by the inferior Danny Mills. We are looking at a negotiated surrender kind of deal just to keep our dignity.

Steve Staunton at left back seems the obvious choice but pairing Dunne with Andy O'Brien or Gary Doherty in the centre of defence means cresting a pairing with less than 20 caps between them. Richard meet Andy, Andy meet Richard, you'll be playing against two of the best strikers in the world today.

And if the gallery of full backs has thinned quicker than Ally McBeal on amphetamines, that catastrophe is as nought to the biblical famine wrought at centre half. Where have they gone, McGrath, Moran, McCarthy, O'Leary and Lawrenson . How careless of us not to have investigated the possibilities of cryogenics when we had them. Mucho consideration and Gary Kelly, Richard Dunne, Steve Staunton and Andy O'Brien (on the left I'm afraid son), c'mon down y'all.

Elsewhere, Mick McCarthy has a fatherly fondness for watching Kevin Kilbane breaking down the left wing. Almost alone of the squad's wingers Kilbane has been granted the licence to play on his favoured side. He's good but increasingly predictable. For his ability to do the unexpected, for the amount of frees he earns from defenders, for the fact he only scores beautiful goals, because he is one of our three best players and because it is what he does best Damien Duff plays on my left wing this Saturday.

On the right wing The Fine State of Locker-Room declares itself to be all for the excellence of Steve Finnan of Fulham. A tidy athletic gent, Finnan is doing good things every time you see him. And he has survived as a first choice in a rising Fulham side. I may know nothing, but Jean Tigana is smart as a whip. Finnan starts.

Centre of midfield looks wonderful. Matt Holland and Roy Keane. Keane standing back a little, Holland attacking. Ah! I close my eyes and see a pre-match dressing-room, I hear a bollicking from Keane which causes players to come out in blisters and I see a blinding revelation hitting them all. They owe this guy. Big. For all the off-the-record moaning they do about Keane shouting at them, he has dragged them this far. Time to pay tribute to him by emulating him.

Not easy but that's Given, Kelly, Dunne, Staunton, O'Brien, Finnan, Holland, Roy K. Duff, Quinn, Robbie K, walking out onto a Lansdowne Road, grassy and bumpy and with the sidelines as close to each other as is legally possible and 90 minutes of hell's kitchen stuff .

No sirree, don't come looking for me if it all goes pear shaped.