He makes a good point.
The result was never going to be the most important thing when it came to the Republic of Ireland’s friendly with Turkey.
We lost and, while there were some positives to be drawn (mostly the outstanding Declan Rice), the performance smacked of familiarity. Ireland weren’t composed on the ball, there was a startling lack of creativity in midfield and the defending to allow Turkey to score was exceptionally poor.
It was only a friendly, but we can be excused for having expected better.
Of course, while a raft of new faces have been pumped into the squad, one thing that hasn’t changed is the presence of Martin O’Neill. There had been cautious optimism that the changes made by O’Neill would have introduced a sense of enterprise to Ireland’s play, but it wasn’t to be.
And it seems that RTE pundit Richie Sadlier isn’t overly impressed with O’Neill’s brand of football.
“You talk about new players and a new system,” Sadlier said during his half-time comments. “But a lot of that depends on the information they’re getting from the manager and Martin’s a manager who waits until the very last minute to pick his team and I’m not sure that’s the best approach when you’re trying new things. He should have been picking the team at the start of the week and spending the rest of the week preparing with that team.
After full-time, Sadlier said it was a worthwhile exercise but once again raised concern with the performance.
“There was no obvious difference in that Ireland performance with a back three than there was with a back four. The same things we’ve been concerned about were still there.
“There was no composure on the ball, we created very little opportunities going forward and if you’re looking for a pattern of play or some kind of style, we were led to believe from Martin’s pre-match comments that the plan would be to get the two wide players on the ball in advanced positions – there was no passage of play during the game that suggested that was something they had worked on because it didn’t happen.”
Once again, Richie Sadlier’s intelligent, balanced and articulate brand of punditry shines through, even after a drab friendly. He smacked the nail on the head with regards to a lack of any kind of rhythm from Ireland and was right to call out O’Neill for jeopardising the cohesion in the side by picking his team very close to the game itself.
"There were a lot of pluses…..but there some concerns in that the same concerns remained." – @richiesadlier on the Ireland performance. pic.twitter.com/kbsb8kSafI
— RTÉ Soccer (@RTEsoccer) March 23, 2018
