One last throw of the dice for Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson will feature sticking with Jake O\u2019Brien\u2019s long throw-in.<\/p>\n
A frustrating feature of Ireland\u2019s crushing defeat in Armenia last month was the ineffectiveness of the Corkman slinging balls into the box from his arms.<\/p>\n
Either Dara O\u2019Shea\u2019s flick-ons were wasted or the predictable ploy was dealt with by the hosts, just one of the many tactics which led to the latest embarrassing loss for the Irish team.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien seems to have had more joy when replicating his speciality for Everton and with the Portuguese Galacticos awaiting in Lisbon on Saturday week, expect any deadball opportunity to be maximised.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you play the game in your head, it’s probably going to be a ball possession for Portugal,\u201d said Hallgr\u00edmsson, setting out his stall.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we need to use every opportunity to get players higher up the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s why, for example, set-pieces are vital for an underdog team like us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a lot of set-pieces against Hungary but didn\u2019t utilise them against Armenia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used the throw-ins in that game to recycle the ball, to get players higher up on the pitch and into the box. That will be important in Portugal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Floating the notion of Ireland shocking the team ranked fifth in the world when they failed to do so against an Armenian side languishing 100 places behind is a bold call.<\/p>\n
Hallgrimsson used the 1-1 friendly result against Senegal as a reference point for his optimism, chiming with the declaration from Nathan Collins post-Armenia that Ireland up their game against superior opposition.<\/p>\n
It all sounds extremely tenuous when the margin for error over a six-match blitz is diminishing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a project on our hands and we were feeling really good with it until Armenia,\u201d said the Icelander about his 11-game tenure.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould we make one game affect what we are doing and how we are working?<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely not. We continue to have belief in the squad and will continue with our work.<\/p>\n
“So let’s not start to cry now. We need players and staff to believe in what we are doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to fix what we think needs to be fixed, which is probably more than we thought in the beginning. This kind of vulnerability and instability is the thing we are trying to correct.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s the most important thing now \u2013 to look at this game against Portugal as a challenge, an opportunity to restore dignity and pride.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chiselled campaigners S\u00e9amus Coleman and John Egan will ensure that\u2019s a minimum.<\/p>\n
Coleman turns 37 on the day of the Portugal game and may well be tasked with curtailing the impact of a familiar contemporary in Cristiano Ronaldo.<\/p>\n
Egan is now 32 but has the memory of his first international goal from the last competitive visit to Portugal in 2021.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s recovered from a long-term foot injury to re-establish himself as a Championship regular at Hull City, adding another option to the defensive armoury.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now calling in experienced players and hopefully they will correct some of these things,\u201d noted the manager.<\/p>\n
Troy Parrott will definitely be involved once he participates in AZ Alkmaar\u2019s fixture against Telstar on Sunday. He had been initially ruled out with a knee injury but has made swift progress during his comeback.<\/p>\n
There were some mixed signals about whether the striker would be available for both matches but any gametime at the weekend would ease fears about Saturday week coming too soon.<\/p>\n
Hallgrimsson can tolerate the absences of latest injury victims Matt Doherty and Bosun Lawal but the mental side of the team\u2019s malaise appears to be lingering.<\/p>\n
His desire to enlist a sports psychologist won\u2019t be acceded too in this campaign, as new chief football officer John Martin is angling towards tackling the deficit by appointing an expert to cover both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe the vulnerability is the thing we need to correct the most,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in the future this is something that will be the norm for every national team to have.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it needs to be the correct person. And that’s something that the FAI needs to start to work on because the pressure on being in the national team is huge.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether this would have changed something in the past, we’ll never know. It\u2019s a long-term fix.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the short-term, Hallgrimsson isn\u2019t minded to throw in the towel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One last throw of the dice for Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson will feature sticking with Jake O\u2019Brien\u2019s long throw-in. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,2539,5782,43,5783],"class_list":{"0":"post-59989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fai","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-league-of-ireland","12":"tag-local-soccer","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-premiership"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}