Former Republic of Ireland manager Brian Kerr has lamented the apparent lack of instructions from Martin O’Neill to his Ireland team.
Ireland lost 1-0 in their first friendly of the year in Antalya, Turkey, last Friday and Kerr said that O’Neill’s side looks like a team that are playing without a pattern and without much instruction as to what formation they are playing in for any given match.
“Martin O’Neill had great success at several clubs, particularly at Leicester and Celtic, and he obviously has a way of doing things which is different. All managers do things a little bit differently,” said Kerr on RTE’s Soccer Republic.
‘I find it extraordinary’ – Brian Kerr on Martin O’Neill’s policy on naming the Republic of Ireland team just an hour before kick-off #soccerrepublic pic.twitter.com/Xe6xCGjNvQ
— Soccer Republic (@SoccRepublic) March 26, 2018
“But still, I find it extraordinary that at international level, where you don’t have the players so often — you’re not playing 50, 60 games a season — that there seems to be no clear instructions, or instructions about the formation, or even the personnel playing in what position until they get to the dressing room.
“Too often it looks to me like there hasn’t been any practice of the pattern of play that they’re going to play.
“The ball went out to [Seamus] Coleman occasionally and it didn’t look there was any work done on what his next options would be — whether it was to try and play it into the front player, back into the midfield or back across to the centre-backs. It was hesitation and then it just broke down.”
Ireland will now play France at the end of May before playing the USA at the start of June.
