John O'Shea says Ireland are focusing on the Faroes now writes EMMET MALONE

LIKE HIS manager, John O’Shea is clinging to the idea that Germany’s dominance of Ireland’s qualification group might mean the sale of Friday’s defeat will be less significant than if it had been inflicted by a rival for second spot.

Still, he appreciates the loss significantly increases the pressure as Giovanni Trapattoni’s men as they prepare for tomorrow’s third outing of the campaign here in Torshavn.

“The games that decide qualification won’t be the Germany matches,” insists the Waterford man, “they are going to be Austria and Sweden although that’s not forgetting about Kazakhstan or the Faroe Islands either.

“The Faroes have proven to be very difficult opponents already for other teams in the group but we have to be aiming to at least finish in the play-off place. If you want to do that then you have to be beating these teams.

“Thankfully this game has come around really quickly and we can get three qualifying points towards qualifying for the World Cup.”

To do that the players will have to pick themselves up from a torrid 90 minutes at the Aviva stadium. The key now, however, is to push on with the games that should be winnable and need to be won.

“Obviously we are still massively disappointed by how it went the other night,” he says. “But if we get the win then we will have six points from three games. We can’t forget about the other night but hopefully we can move on from it.

“We had a good chat at half- time on Friday, we were a couple of goals down and we opened up. That disrupted the structure that we had in the first half and if you do that against a confident German team . . . then conceding the penalty early on after the break obviously knocked the stuffing out of us. Unfortunately, that is not what we should have done.

“We should have regrouped and left it at 3-0.”

Trapattoni’s critics point to his failure to take charge at that point and formulate a response that might have improved things in the second half or, at the very least, halted the slide but O’Shea brushes aside the suggestion that the manager should take responsibility for the quality of the performance and the scale of the defeat.

“That’s the beauty of sport, people are allowed their opinion. We will see how the players respond tomorrow. We have to put a performance in to get ourselves back in with a chance of qualifying from the group.

“If we do that they we will be able to go forward. It was not nice to be part of the 6-1 defeat the other night but, look, in football Manchester City beat Manchester United 6-1 last season and United beat Arsenal 8-2 around the same time. They were both high quality teams so it happens in football. It’s how you react to it that counts.”

As for the supporters, he is frank about the reaction inside the stadium where many booed the team at the final whistle.

“I would say that they were exactly right to do it,” he says. “I’m surprised the whole stadium did not do it after a 6-1 loss. When you come to watch a team to try to get a win and it loses 6-1, it’s not the result that you want and you are not going to be happy.”

There has been plenty of talk in the few days since the game of a meeting between the manager and the players as well as among the players themselves but O’Shea insists there has not been much soul searching or apportioning of blame over the weekend.

“Not really,” he says, “it was about making sure that we don’t do that again and to focus on what our objectives are.

“What the manager has said is to remember what we achieved over the last few years in qualifying for the Euros and almost qualifying for the World Cup; that is what we want to get back to.”

The Sunderland defender will learn today if he is to retain the captaincy with Robbie Keane still a doubt due to injury despite having travelled to the Faroes on the team flight at lunchtime yesterday.

Keane took part in training in Malahide yesterday morning but could still be ruled out of the game itself by the Achilles problem aggravated last week in a challenge by David Meyler. Marco Tardelli has previously said that the tackle in question had been by Paul McShane.