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WHEN THE WORLD Cup’s queasy festivities get underway in Doha on 20 November, Ireland will be playing a friendly game in Malta: truly on the outskirts of attention. Irish fans will get a sprinkling of stardust before that, however, with noted Goal Terminator Erling Haaland visiting Dublin with his Norwegian team-mates on Thursday week.
Stephen Kenny names his squad for this double-header of friendly internationals on Thursday, though don’t expect wholesale changes, as we are now in the evolution that has followed the revolution.
One player who may make the cut is West Ham’s Conor Coventry.
Coventry captained the Irish U21s in their close-run heartbreak in qualifying this year, but he is older than many of his former underage team-mates. All of Gavin Bazunu, Nathan Collins, Jason Knight, Troy Parrott, Andrew Omobamidele, Adam Idah, and Michael Obafemi have been given their senior stripes before Coventry.
This month seems a good chance to afford that opportunity to Coventry, however, given Ireland need to add depth to their midfield, and Coventry has had some first-team football with West Ham in Europe.
Coventry started both of West Ham’s closing Europa Conference League games, and has impressed David Moyes, comparing him favourably to Josh Cullen. Moyes then said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Coventry followed the same path as Cullen to the Irish senior set-up, though the subtext of that prediction involved his leaving West Ham, too.
Cullen is integral to the Irish team and is one of Ireland’s truly irreplaceable players. Where there is some depth in the midfield positions ahead of Cullen – currently occupied by Jason Knight and Jayson Molumby – there is no such cover for Cullen.
Could Coventry be the man to provide it? On the basis of his two recent starts in the Conference League, the jury is out.
Which isn’t to say that he will have no role in the Irish senior squad, either.
This ambiguity is not necessarily his fault: it’s partly a function of how West Ham used him in games against Silkeborg and FCSB (the artist formerly known as Steaua Bucharest.)
West Ham have picked a back three in Europe this season, and Coventry played the latter two games in a midfield pair alongside the more attacking-minded Manuel Lanzini.
Coventry’s primary – though by no means only – role was to sit deep and work as a kind of vector for possession, to keep the ball circulating.
He did it pretty effectively in both games. There was nothing spectacular about this work – he hit just one long pass in each game – but it was broadly effective. He occasionally chose the easy option too often, popping the ball backwards rather than turning and moving West Ham up the pitch. Here’s a prime example early in the Silkeborg game on matchday five. Rather than turn and make the most of the space ahead of him, he bounces the ball backwards.
In Coventry’s defence, this was a few minutes into only his second senior start for West Ham, so he might naturally have been nervous and thus slightly conservative.
He did have occasion to show a more ambitious range of passing as the game went on. This first-time, fizzed pass (below) after a good scan of what was ahead of him, for instance, is vintage Cullen, bypassing four opposition players while delivering the ball right to Michail Antonio’s feet.
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