Giovanni Trapattoni is not everyone's cup of tea, but critics will be hard pressed to knock his positive start to Ireland's World Cup qualifying campaign, says Emmet Malone

HE WOULD, surely, in the parlance of the game, have taken his record thus far if he'd been offered it before he started, but as he celebrated his first Christmas as Republic of Ireland manager, Giovanni Trapattoni has already learned that uniting the critics is a good deal harder than merely winning the games.

There have been much harder openings to campaigns down the years but Ireland have, nevertheless, made their best start in a decade under the Italian. At the same stage two years ago, the team had taken one rather than seven points and while there are clear signs that weaknesses persists in several departments, the main players look more motivated while the younger ones appear to better understand what is required of them.

Still, there is sweeping criticism from some quarters with Trapattoni's exclusion of Andy Reid from the team having been seized upon as a stick with which to beat the veteran coach.

As it happens, the coach's more substantial difficulties centre on Reid's namesake Steven, whose brief return between injuries to the international set-up appeared to provide the Italian with a midfield platform on which to base an essentially attacking game plan.

While the 27-year-old was asked to drive the team from the heart of the action, Glenn Whelan was handed the supporting role but when the Blackburn midfielder got injured again, his less experienced team-mate really found himself thrust centre stage and Trapattoni's determination not to replace one Reid with another has ended up being the major controversy of his first seven months in charge.

During that time the Irish team has not really produced even one genuinely impressive performance but given the resources available to him, Trapattoni has certainly restored shape and a sense of purpose where little or none could be discerned a year earlier.

The progress made, though, has been solid rather than spectacular although Steve Staunton's successor could be forgiven for being bemused by the expectation that a more dramatic transformation could have been engineered so quickly.

By the end of the year he was obviously a little exasperated too with the media's preoccupation with Andy Reid. The Sunderland player's club has been fairly indifferent and he appears not to have helped his own cause with Trapattoni at times but, for all that, the extent of his marginalisation has still come as a surprise.

Given the persistently poor quality of the Ireland's set-pieces and crossing, Reid would have appeared to present at least a useful fall back but the Italian insisted after the Poland game that breaking of a curfew in Germany a couple of months previously had made the decision to exclude the Dubliner that much easier to stand over.

Though clearly not happy, Reid has, to his credit, resisted the temptation to take exception and announce his retirement and he may yet be rewarded with a recall for one or more of Ireland's qualifiers in the spring.

That, of course, would require additional injury problems or a rethink on the part of Trapattoni prompted by a couple of poor results. With such a thin squad, the former is always a possibility while the games against Bulgaria then Italy in three months' time may well yet bring the latter.

Given his attitude towards Reid, it is actually hard to tell how Trapattoni would react if Stephen Ireland really does, as has been suggested he will, decide to end his self-imposed international exile in the new year.

A few weeks back, the manager strongly hinted that the Cork man couldn't be accommodated in his team any more easily than Reid but the Manchester City midfielder's form this year is such that that really would be a difficult stand to maintain.

Just about anything will be possible for the 69-year-old to justify, though, as long as his team stays on course for at least a place in the qualification play-offs. It remains a major challenge to get them there, but his record so far of one defeat in seven games and an unbeaten start to the World Cup campaign, combined with Bulgaria's miserable form, does make it seem a good deal more achievable than it looked when he officially started in the job at the start of May.

On the home front, Bohemians' tremendous double-winning campaign was achieved against the backdrop of growing financial difficulties at clubs up and down the country - including the all-conquering Dalymount Park outfit.

Predictably, perhaps, the FAI have ceaselessly sought to portray the situation in the most positive light possible with crises at the likes of Drogheda United, Cork City and Cobh Ramblers supposed, it seems, to be part of a necessary correction that will ultimately leave the league as a whole in better shape.

The upbeat assessments out of Abbotstown were greeted with growing scepticism at club level as the year wore on and more clubs struggled, or simply failed, to meet their wage bills.

Still, there is some hope amongst the administrators that the current problems will, as the association insists, lead to a situation in which lower salary costs makes the aim of balancing the books a little more achievable.

With two of the country's biggest clubs having been forced into examinership, a handful more still struggling to map out futures for themselves, and just about all of the rest feeling the bite of the recession, the optimism that was evident 12 months ago when a number of clubs sought to go full-time has pretty much evaporated.

What effect the dramatic change of mood and financial outlook will have on the field of play remains to be seen but it is certainly hard to imagine how the steady improvement in the quality of football produced made over the past number of years can be maintained.

Particularly in Europe the progress made by the leading Irish sides has been abundantly evident and changes in the format of the two Uefa competitions had held out the prospect of a real breakthrough being a little more attainable.

Five months after Drogheda United narrowly missed out on eliminating Dynamo Kiev from the Champions League, though, that team has broken up, and Pat Fenlon is faced with the challenge of coping with significant cutbacks at Bohemians as they look to build on this season's record-breaking campaign in this next year's competitions.

He may not have much of a feel for the Irish club game but that struggle to achieve international success with terribly limited resources is at least something Trapattoni can relate to.

What We Already Knew

That the road to South Africa will be a steep climb rather than a long walk.

What We Learned

That an Ireland manager's press conferences can be at least as entertaining as watching his team.

What We Think Might Happen

Due to injuries or exasperation, Giovanni Trapattoni will finally play Andy Reid who will duly fail to set the world on fire.