THE STATUS HAS been a long time coming, but David McGoldrick speaks with the confidence a Premier League striker who is first-choice at international level.
“I think we have, yeah”, when asked if Sheffield United had taken a few people by surprise thus far this season.
“And we are still getting our critics. I heard Garth Crooks talking the other day, saying we are a bit down and we’re rubbish but he hasn’t seen anything [from us]. I don’t have a clue what he took that morning, but he needs to think.”
Speaking on Final Score on the BBC last Saturday, Crooks said the Blades “lack potency upfront” and thought “their style of football is quite basic for the Premier League.”
“We’re not ordinary”, said McGoldrick, “we play a different way style. We’ve come with the same philosophy that we had in the Championship and we need to get respect for the fact we won’t change for anyone.
“We’ve got a few results and listen, it’s going to be a long season, we are going to have ups and downs, there are going to be games where we get beaten and walk off the pitch and we are just going to have to hold our hands up but I think at home we can give teams a lot of problems.”
Having previously worked under Mick McCarthy at Ipswich, McGoldrick has started all of the qualification games to date and looks likely to lead the line in Thursday’s crucial Euro 2020 qualifier with Switzerland.
It’s been a remarkable transformation. He was absent from the international squad for all of 2018, a year in which his contract expired at Ipswich Town and was briefly left without a club and looking anxiously looking at his phone.
Eventually Sheffield United called to take him on trial, and once he had proven his fitness to the club, he was given a contract.
“If I’m honest, a year ago, looking at it when the phone wasn’t ringing, playing in the Premier League would have been looked a long way off to look at. But I always would have had confidence in myself.
“I always would have felt that once I got myself sorted I could hit a bit of form and I did that. I’m here now, I’m thankful for it and that’s why I don’t want to stop now.”
He is forging a club partnership with international team-mate with Callum Robinson at the moment, something which he says can benefit the international team.
“ We’ve brought in the whizz-kid Callum down to our place. He’s a great bubbly guy to have around in any dressing room”, said McGoldrick.
“Callum is a good player. He started the last game against Gibraltar and did really well, nearly scored, and he’s come down and he’s done really well again.
He’s a bright footballer, so he’s easy to play with. He’s got good feet, he’s got a good football brain – not off the pitch, he’s a bit of a dope – but on the pitch, he’s got a football brain and he can play, so that helps out any footballer, so yes, it’s going well. It’s nice playing with him at club level, learning his little movements and we worked together a lot in pre-season.
So if we do play together at international level I think it can only bode well for the country.”
McGoldrick has yet to score in his 10 games for Ireland – the opening goal against Gibraltar was given to him but soon corrected to a Joseph Chipolina own goal – but he is confident the goals will soon arrive.
“First and foremost, qualifying is most important. But every striker is judged on goals. I want to score goals every day in training and in games, and when it hit the post and bounced out against Gibraltar I thought, ‘F-sake’. But it’s coming, I’m getting chances and that is the main thing.
“I’ve had chances in each game, one will go in and the rest will follow.”
While McCarthy yesterday played down the fact Xherdan Shaqiri won’t be in the Swiss team on Thursday night – he has decided to stay on Merseyside to try and prise his way into the Liverpool team – McGoldrick was more straightforward on the same question.
“David, when you heard Shaqiri wasn’t going to be involved, how did you feel?”
“Buzzing.
“He’s a good player, isn’t he? He’s the main player you look out for. When I heard the news he wasn’t playing, yeah, I was buzzing.”
- Originally published at 11.49
Murray Kinsella joins Gavan Casey, Ryan Bailey and Sean Farrell with their immediate reaction to Ireland’s 31-man squad for the Rugby World Cup in Japan.
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