STEPHEN KENNY HAS rejected pre-match comments by Luxembourg manager Luc Holtz that Ireland have had more success in reverting to a “British style” of play since the last meeting between the two sides last March.
Ireland were beaten 1-0 at home by Luxembourg to stymie their qualification hopes in just their second game, but have improved and lost just once in their nine games since.
Holtz said he believes Ireland’s improvement is down to a return to a style they have been playing for “100 years”, based on “fighting spirit, more long balls, more [physical] contacts.”
These comments were put to Kenny at his pre-match press conference, and he rejected them without wishing to wade into a lengthy discussion.
“I don’t really have any reaction. Anyone can say anything. I have no reaction to that”, said Kenny.
Asked whether they were accurate, he replied, “It’s certainly not accurate.”
Disagreements over style aside, there is consensus that Ireland have improved since their humiliating night in March.
“It has been mentioned several times, obviously we lost to Luxembourg in March”, said Kenny. “That last-gasp defeat in Portugal is the only [defeat] in nine since then. So we have learned a lot. We have a stronger squad overall, with the influx of a lot of players we have brought through the system. That gives us greater competition for places, which you need.
“We are an improving team, we are improving all the time. We are not perfect, we still have some work to do to get better. We are hungry to get better, the determination, there’s a great spirit in the squad.
“You have seen that recently in the last few windows. There’s tremendous togetherness in the squad and we’ve seen a very high technical standard in recent games, against Portugal, Qatar, Azerbaijan and Serbia.”
Ireland will salvage third place in the group with a win tomorrow night, and Kenny’s aim is to back up an encouraging showing against Portugal with a strong performance against a lower seed, which they failed to do in September by drawing at home to Azerbaijan.
“The level of performance has been good and we want to back that up after the other day against Portugal. We don’t want to play Portugal – play extremely well in front of a full house – and come over here and lower our standards. It’s important that we keep going, we push on again, try to win tomorrow night. We’re very determined to try and do that and that’s very important for all the group, we have to go and put in a strong performance. Luxembourg are a technical team, a good team, a possession-based team, we’ll have to earn the right to win, we’ll have to work hard to win, we’re very determined to do that. We want to make sure we can do that and we’re ready to go.”
Ireland’s only injury concern is Andrew Omobamidele, but Kenny is optimistic he will be fit to play having missed the Portugal game with a heel issue.
