The stats that show why Irish football is in an absolute mess
While England can select players from the best clubs in the world, Ireland are reliant on the Championship and Europe's lower leagues to make up their starting X1.
In Irish football, there are truths, damned truths and statistics.
Like this one. Since James McClean scored that decisive winner against Wales in the World Cup qualifier in 2017, Ireland have played 31 competitive games against first and second seeded teams and won just one. Worse again, they have drawn 13 and lost 17 of those remaining matches.
Some of those days - the 5-1 loss at home to Denmark, the 4-1 defeat away to Wales - have been harrowing while others were a mixture of bad luck and bad play.
Yet somehow Heimir Hallgrimsson has to try and convince his new players that they have what it takes to beat England on Saturday.
This is the same England who have reached a World Cup semi-final, World Cup quarter-final and who have been runner-up in the last two European Championships.
When they last played, their team contained nine Premier League regulars - the other two being Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham.
When Ireland last played, they were hammered 3-0.
When England last played, they had three players from Manchester City in their team, two each from Manchester United and Arsenal, one apiece from Crystal Palace, Everton, Real Madrid and Bayern.
When Ireland last played, the team sheet appeared respectable enough: Liverpool, Everton, Ipswich Town, Southampton, Burnley, Celtic, Preston and AZ Alkmaar providing the players.
But look at what has happened since.
Caoimhin Kelleher has yet to play this season. Dara O’Shea and Jake O’Brien have not played a Premier League game this season.
Will Smallbone, Seamus Coleman and Sammie Szmodics have but between them their results read: played seven, drawn one, lost six.
In other words no Irish player who started Ireland's most recent game against Portugal has won a Premier League match this season.
Yet they are convinced they can win.
This is Kasey McAteer, their new recruit: “We have a world class side, England, coming down to the Aviva on Saturday, but at the end of the day it's 11v11. We have to believe what we are doing is right and hopefully we can deliver our game plan and get the win that we are all really working hard for.”
For the hard working fans who have forked out top dollar to come to the Aviva on Saturday, ensuring the game is a sell-out, even a moral victory would mean something at this stage.
They need it - because the last seven years have been grim.
There was a play-off defeat that prevented The Boys in Green making it to Euro 2020 but they won two out of eight qualifiers on the road to Qatar, two out of eight on the road to Germany, and have won two out of 16 Nations League games since that competition began.
Under Martin O’Neill there was a time when they defied the odds, smashing German, Bosnian, Italian, Austrian and Welsh egos across a two-year timeframe.
But since that McClean goal in October 2017, they have been beaten 5-1 by Denmark, beaten three times by Wales, once by Switzerland, Ukraine, Scotland, Portugal, Serbia, twice by Finland, Greece, France and the Netherlands in competitive matches.
Three different managers, O’Neill, Mick McCarthy and Stephen Kenny, have overseen the slide, the first two being pragmatists, the third a reforming zealot.
But the Kenny reforms have yet to pay off.
Now Hallgrimsson will be hoping to take advantage of the groundwork Kenny laid.
Kelleher, Gavin Bazunu, Jayson Moloumby, Dara O’Shea, Nathan Collins, Evan Ferguson, Michael Obafemi, Troy Parrott, Josh Cullen, Will Smallbone, Chiedozie Ogbene and Evan Ferguson have all come from nowhere to become established players.
Then there are new guys like McAteer who was headhunted by Kenny and later John O’Shea.
They all represent the future.
But the present looks grim.
England, a team full of stars, look too good.
And while McAteer’s point about football being a game that is won on grass rather than on paper is a fair one - you can’t ignore reality.
Which is this.
It wasn’t a new manager that Ireland needed.
It was a magician.
And unless Hallgrimsson packed a magic wand in his luggage when he flew south from Iceland, Saturday has the potential to be a disaster.
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