Martin O’Neill ready to change it up as Kevin Doyle enjoys his return

Martin O’Neill is expected to change both the line up and lay out of his team in

Poland

tomorrow night although his scope for radical change has been trimmed a little bit over the weekend by the loss of two players who may have started in Poznan.

"In terms of injuries," the 61-year-old said yesterday, "we will be going without Andy Reid and Joey O'Brien who have been given permission to return to their clubs. Poland will be a tough test for the [other] players. They have some real threats in their squad but we will try to play to our strengths and show the same focus we displayed against Latvia. The match will also provide me with an opportunity to look at some of the options we have . . . "

The Poles, who are undergoing something of a tactical overhaul under a new manager themselves, will certainly be anxious to show some improvement against Ireland. The team endured a miserable World Cup qualifying campaign, winning just once outside of two games against San Marino.

Under pressure
New boss Adam Nawalka will, like O'Neill, now be under pressure to generate the improvement required to get his side to the expanded European Championships in 2016. And while he has a fairly mixed bag of players to work with there are certainly some major talents, including Borussia Dortmund pair Jakub Blaszczykowski and Robert Lewandowski, both of whom are in the squad for tomorrow's game.

While the Poles lost 2-0 to Slovakia on Friday night, Ireland’s victory, and the enormously positive response to it, has put O’Neill in a good position to chop and change as he sees fit – despite having suggested in advance of the Latvia game that one or two of players might return to England without having seen any action.

Kevin Doyle, of course, will be looking to start after having come after 80 minutes against Latvia and the Wolves striker may end up benefitting from the departure of Reid, who, like O’Brien, has fallen victim to a hamstring problem.

Along with his club, the 30-year-old Doyle has suffered a difficult time over the past couple of seasons. But things appear to have turned for the better since the summer with the Irish man getting three goals in 15 appearances so far this season for the Molineux outfit who are now top of League One. He has also returned to the Irish set up after being marginalised in the closing months of Giovanni Trapattoni’s time in charge.

It’s the same with everyone,” he says now, “you just get on with it. If you’re picked, you’re picked; if not you get on with it at your club. You see Wardy who has come back into the team, he never got too disheartened. What can you do? If 23 players get picked, they get picked, so be it.”

He’s glad to be back now but knows that with Noel King having picked this squad for O’Neill he must take any available opportunity to impress.

'It hurts alright'
"I don't take it for granted," admits the man who pretty much could do so up until Euro 2012. "You do miss it when you're not there. You get more time off to spend with your family and I have young kids, you try to enjoy that. But when the actual games themselves come around, like the qualifiers . . . and you're watching them, it hurts alright."

He has, he says, no complaints about his treatment at the hands of Trapattoni, but he still sounds just a little bewildered by way things went so badly wrong at the European championships. “It was a blur, a whirlwind,” he says. “It was a long build up and then all of a sudden you play three games in, what? eight or nine days if even that and you’re out of the competition, going home and then going away on holiday thinking ‘f***ing hell!’”

Ireland’s three opponents were, he says however, “fantastic teams,” and the reality is that with the Euros now enlarged it is possible Ireland might never find itself in a group so difficult again.

The key thing, though, is to qualify and, from Doyle’s perspective, to play a part in that process and so O’Neill’s tactical preferences are of particular interest at present as the number of strikers the manager uses will impact the Wexford man.

'Different game'
"Maybe it will be different for different games," he suggests. "We had a lot of possession against Latvia but the way we played is maybe different to how we will play against Poland. It will be a different game totally. He [O'Neill] has been a fantastic manager for many years so I'm sure he will know how to work it. No manager does the same every time. It will be a different team from what I hear, maybe a different formation."

He doesn’t know for sure, he says, but he hopes his chance will come.