Hallgrimsson said on Monday that he “wouldn’t expect a lot of changes” despite it being a dead rubber friendly as he wanted a “solid” performance, and he stayed true to his word.<\/p>\n
He fielded a strong side with John Egan the only one of three changes made that was not enforced and it was a solid but unspectacular display from the home side.<\/p>\n
It was always going to be hard to match the tempo displayed in the first half in particular on Thursday night, especially with players still trying to come to terms with having their World Cup dream ended in such a cruel manner, and it was a rather damp squib in Dublin in front of a healthy crowd given the circumstances.<\/p>\n
Parrott was industrious and unlucky not to score in a fourth consecutive game for his country as he had one ruled out for offside and also hit the post.<\/p>\n
Defying their lack of minutes as club level, Seamus Coleman, on potentially his last appearance for his country, and Chiedozie Ogbene brought great energy down the right-hand side.<\/p>\n
Azaz was bright playing in the number 10 role, particularly as the hosts picked up the pace in the first 10 minutes of the second half in their search for an opener.<\/p>\n
The introduction of eight Irish substitutes throughout the second period ultimately halted their momentum as the game fizzled out.<\/p>\n
It was always a game that Hallgrimsson’s side just had to get through and they will quickly move onto June and preparing for the start of the Nations League in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hallgrimsson said on Monday that he “wouldn’t expect a lot of changes” despite it being a dead rubber…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-506044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}