Martin O’Neill to persevere with old guard as Euro play-offs loom

The Irish team’s qualification for the playoffs will provide a late boost to the €5 million-plus profit that the FAI was already predicting it will make in 2015 as another big crowd will be expected at the Aviva Stadium for the home leg.

But the real money, of course, is tied up with actually getting to France next summer.

When commercial and other revenues are taken into account, that could be worth upwards of €10 million to an association whose participation at the last European Championships helped keep the wolves from the door at a time when its share of the Lansdowne Road redevelopment costs were starting to kick in.

Then, the association picked up €8 million from a total participation fund of around €200 million (Spain got €23 million after lifting the title).

FAI chief executive John Delaney recently suggested that participation this time would be worth much the same again and Uefa have already said that the total pot will rise at least in line with the 50 per cent increase in qualifying nations.

Participation fee

The final amounts won’t be confirmed until early December, though, after the organisation’s executive committee meets and just before the draw for the tournament take place.

It is understood funding will reflect the overall increase in revenue and there has been speculation that the basic participation fee could rise by as much as €4 million.

That may not actually come to pass but Uefa’s marketing people are certainly upbeat at this stage with Guy-Laurent Epstein of their events subsidiary observing earlier in the year that: “2016 will be the first time in 20 years that the tournament will be hosted in a ‘big five’ market which makes it a more premium-valued event for commercial partners.

“And the competition will grow from 16 teams to 24 teams, which means the competition becomes interesting and relevant in eight additional markets. This is particularly important when sponsors come to sell-in their programmes to their local subsidiaries.”

If Martin O’Neill was still a club manager pondering all of this he would surely head straight for the chairman’s office with that old line about having to speculate to accumulate.

The last six weeks have gone well enough for his side with three wins, including one over the world champions, catapulting Ireland above Scotland and into the play-offs at the expense of Gordon Strachan’s side.

The last few days, however, have again highlighted the extent to which the team would benefit from some young and capable new players.

After Robbie Keane's gradual decline was brought into focus by his inability to make a major impact against Georgia, the case of Wes Hoolahan was centre stage this time. The Dubliner himself went to the manager in the aftermath of the Germany game and, according to O'Neill, expressed doubts about his own ability to get through the entirety back-to-back games in the space of four days, something he has not done at club level in nearly four years..

Given how important his ability to retain possession and help push those around him forward has become to the team, the conversation must have come as blow to O’Neill and his absence was felt through the early part of Sunday’s game. It suggests that there will be problems next month too, whoever the opposition is (the draw is this Sunday morning), and, quite possibly, issues at the tournament itself if Ireland get that far.

Their prime

Hoolahan will be 34 by then,

Shay Given

40, O’Shea 35 and Keane will turn 36 on the day of the tournament’s first semi-final. All are clearly past their prime and yet such is the shortage of quality young talent coming through that all can expect to be on the plane to France if the play-offs go well.

On the face of it, Given is the most obviously replaceable of the bunch. There is not all that much at this stage between him and Darren Randolph while Rob Elliot’s forthcoming spell of first team football at Newcastle United might help to strengthen his case and there are another couple of contenders for consideration.

Keane remains the team’s most natural goalscorer and he is set yet again to be Ireland’s leading one in this campaign. All five of the goals he got were scored in the two games against Gibraltar, though, and the team will scarcely play another such weak team again while he is on the scene. If they do get to France, the striker will surely be there but it will be for the force of his personality and leadership qualities, one suspects, as much as anything else.

O’Shea’s experience, character and organisational abilities on the field keep him in O’Neill’s actual starting line-ups, meanwhile, but at times on Sunday the former Manchester United defender looked almost as jaded as Hoolahan is supposed to have felt and perhaps his suspension for the first leg of the play-offs will not be such a blow if it means that he is at something approaching his best in the second game .

Elsewhere in the side the likes of Seamus Coleman, James McCarthy and Jeff Hendrick have demonstrated an ability to make a real impact on games and if all do it together at some stage, and Robbie Brady finds his range with the free-kicks, we might be in for a real treat.

Overall, though, the strongest case at present to be made for Ireland doing better at next year's European Championship than they did in 2012 is that their group could not be as tough now that there are 24 teams.

They have to get there first, of course. “We’ll take any of them,” said O’Neill light-heartedly of their prospective play-off opponents. Any of them, one suspects however, would pretty happily take Ireland too.