IT WAS A vintage Nations League result for Ireland mixed with some of the worst moments from last year’s World Cup qualifiers.
A 1-0 defeat away to Armenia in the opening group game was a classic Irish result in the Nations League in the sense they neither won nor scored: it’s zero wins and two goals in 11 games now. That’s the grammar of the result, its vocabulary was eerily similar to a couple of last year’s games: toil and fail to break down a low-lying opposition defence, and then get stung by an audacious opposition goal from the edge of the box. It happened in defeat at home to Luxembourg and in a home draw with Azerbaijan, and lo it came to pass against Armenia in Yerevan.
To a list featuring Gerson Rodrigues and Emin Makhmudov you can now add Eduard Spertsyan, whose 74th-minute strike from distance beat Caoimhín Kelleher from distance in Yerevan.
Kenny said his side did not deserve to lose but nor was he claiming they would have been worthy winners, saying “we’ve lost it and we only have ourselves to blame. We are disappointed.”
Chiedozie Ogbene echoed that, saying Ireland needed to change their mentality to become “win-at-costs” while lamenting the lack of pace in Ireland’s passing. Kenny didn’t use the heat as an excuse for what happened. “The heat is a factor but we don’t want to use it as an excuse. Some players are not at the level they were when they finished their season. These are the things you have to overcome and win. Regardless of that situation, we should be able to overcome that.”
Kenny admitted surprise at how Armenia set up: reverting to a back five having started all but one of their previous 20 games with a back four. The exception in that run was a meeting with Germany, but if the change was a compliment to Ireland, it rang hollow at full-time.
“We had prepared for Armenia to play 4-4-2 but seeing their team-sheet it was clear they’d go 5-4-1, sit in and try frustrate us”, said midfielder Josh Cullen. “They wanted to catch us on the counterattack. We didn’t deal with that well enough in possession or out of possession. I’m very disappointed with the result and how we played overall. We struggled to break them down and weren’t as solid as we should have been, definitely on the counterattack.
“We started to dominate things in the second part of the first half and created a few chances. We didn’t take them and got punished with a great strike from their lad. That’s football. If you don’t take your chances, no matter who you’re playing at international level, quality players will punish you.”
The result also kills the momentum Ireland had built up over the last 12 months, when Kenny’s first win away to Andorra kickstarted a run in which Ireland lost one of their next 9 games, and that was The Ronaldo Show in Faro.
“We’ve to make sure that it’s only a bump on road”, said Cullen. “There’s three big games [remaining in this window]. We’ve made good strides over the past year and can’t allow this is to knock us back.”
Ireland now switch attention to the second game of this end-of-season quadruple-header, the visit of Ukraine to Dublin on Wednesday. They will arrive in Dublin knowing their World Cup fate, as they face Wales in a winner-takes-all playoff later tonight.
“They are going to be in good form, they have just beaten Scotland 3-1″, said Ogbene. “Winning mentality, they are going to have momentum. We just have to be better. We have to create a hostile environment for them, make sure the ball speed is quick because if we can lift everyone in the Aviva it’s going to be trouble for the opposition. As I said in the second half, the ball speed wasn’t good enough. If we can make sure it is fast enough in the first half and the second half then we will cause a lot of problems to the opposition.”
