Dara O'Shea outlines why Ireland can respond to Nations League relegation threat
Ireland face Finland and England in next month's final Nations League games, hoping to avoid automatic relegation
Dara O'Shea is confident Ireland can bring the fight to Finland and England and avoid automatic relegation in the Nations L:eague.
But the Ipswich Town defender knows the Boys in Green cannot dine out on their win in Helsinki, having been dealt a sobering wake-up call in Greece.
O’Shea still feels it was a decent international window for Ireland, having recorded a first ever away win in the Nations League. But despite bouncing into the Greece game full of confidence, Heimir Hallgrimsson’s men were unable to follow-up and crumbled to a 2-0 defeat on Sunday.
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Greece have quickly become Ireland’s bogey team and that was the fourth defeat to them in the last 16 months alone. But while disappointed on the night, after Ireland only got going in the second-half when it was too late, O’Shea insists the motivation to avoid the drop is there.
Ireland will host the Finns at Aviva Stadium on November 14, before travelling to play England at Wembley three days later. Finland have lost all four of their B2 games so far, and will be desperate to turn their fortunes around in November when they go to Dublin and then host Greece.
But O’Shea knows a home win over the bottom side will ensure that Ireland - who are three points better off - avoid automatic relegation to League C. If Ireland finish second bottom, as looks likely, they will go into a two-legged playoff in March against a League C second-placed side to see who goes up or down. And as it stands, Slovakia, Kosovo, Bulgaria and Armenia are the four second-placed teams in League C eying those playoff spots for now.
Sizing up the decisive November games, O’Shea said: “The England game is going to be tough. (The home game last month) wasn’t the level we wanted to be at.
“It was the first game with the manager and we only had a short period of time to prepare for the game, so it’s a great opportunity to show what we’re about. But first we’re going into the Finland game which is back at the Aviva. That’s a massive positive for us and we’re going to take the positives from the away performance.”
When Stephen Kenny was manager, he often spoke of wanting to win Nations League B, but those campaigns quickly turned into damp squibs. Hallgrimsson got off to the worst possible start himself, losing both of last month’s opening games but the win in Finland last week was a spur. Ireland couldn’t back it up though, so it’s a familiar case of one step forward, two steps back for the Boys in Green - but O’Shea insists there are grounds for optimism.
“Of course we want to be competitive in the group and we’ve lost some games,” he said. “We’ve only won one but the aim is to stay in this group and win our remaining games. It’s as simple as that, it’s not just to avoid relegation.”
O’Shea continued: “We want to win games as a nation, we want to improve, we want to qualify for major tournaments. Momentum is the key thing and putting in performances back-to-back. The result in Helsinki was great, especially coming from behind.
“We showed there’s a lot of character in the group. Against Greece, there was a period in the second-half when we were on top. I thought the goal would come, but it didn’t.”
O’Shea performed well last week, and especially so in that Greece game with Ireland’s rearguard making a head-spinning number of blocks as they put bodies on the line.
Hallgrimsson liked what he saw in O’Shea, and that’s significant considering the new Ireland boss has stressed how he doesn’t like team rotation for the sake of it.
“He knows our strengths and has simplified our game. We need to get the ball in the opposition half and do our damage there,” explained the 25-year-old. “We’ve got some great attacking players who are playing at high levels in the UK and abroad and we want to give them the ball and let them do their thing.”
O’Shea continued: “As a nation, we’re hard-working and the manager is trying to get that going by drilling it into us. He wants us to play differently to the way we’ve played in the last couple of years so it’s going to take time - but we need to get results soon.
“We’re three points better off than we were before the window so that’s a positive, but we need to keep building and take the good from games. We’re still quite a young side because if you look at that Greek side, they’re quite experienced, their average age is a lot more than ours. They probably have a lot more caps than we have, but we can’t use that as an excuse. We have to grow into it, but I think we are.”
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