Martin O’Neill takes tolerant stance as transfer window hinders plans

Martin O’Neill was in ‘grin and bear it’ mode yesterday.

The soundtrack to the first international break of the season used to consist of club managers decrying the stupidity of having their players leave after just one league game.

These days, in yet another sign of the way the balance of power is shifting, national team managers find themselves trying to prepare for important qualifiers while players keep them posted on when and where they might have to go for a medical.

Only Jon Walters was actually absent from Abbotstown, with a possible move away from Stoke for him unfolding, but O'Neill acknowledged he was having to adopt an understanding attitude as one or two kept an eye on their phones. Still, there might be something in it for the Derry man.

More game time for a player like Aiden McGeady, who has been linked with a loan move away from Goodison Park, is clearly something he would welcome ahead of the qualifiers against Germany and Poland.

Against Gibraltar and Georgia, the expectation is that Ireland should have enough about them to take six points. If not, the outcome of October’s games will surely be academic.

Walters’ situation, of course, will be resolved by the time the team flies to Faro tomorrow afternoon (the player was reported to have submitted a transfer request). However, it seems incredible that when Fifa, underpressure from clubs, changed its international calendar to do away with the unwanted August friendly, it contributed to the creation of a situation instead in which the transfer windows in major leagues close at a time when players are not even with their clubs.

O’Neill said the striker had stayed in Stoke as a precaution, while McGeady and one or two others had travelled on the basis that a loan move could be completed more easily.

The former Sunderland and Aston Villa manager insisted that the Gibraltar game was being taken as seriously as a Germany one would, but he must be relieved that this particular circus is playing itself out in the lead up to one of Ireland’s easier games.

“The game is very important to us,” he said. “We can’t look at anything else other than trying to win. We’re in a position where, if we can win all four games, then we qualify automatically. It would be nice if something materialised from that [Scotland’s game in Tbilisi] but I don’t think I can worry myself into oblivion about it. If it happens, it happens.

Difference

“I think the Scottish games are still difficult but it’s up to us to win our two matches. We’ve got to win our games and focus on that. If we can, then you might see a difference in the table.”

With Jack Grealish having apparently taken more time to decide on his international future, there is not the novelty of a new kid on the block but O’Neill is in a position to stick very closely to the side he started against the Scots in June, with only Daryl Murphy missing through injury.

More significantly perhaps, McGeady is available again, although how close the Everton midfielder is to actually being 100 per cent fit is open to question. This season he has played just 45 minutes of competitive football, and O’Neill is unlikely to take anything for granted, especially given how he expressed exasperation a few weeks back about the way the player allowed a hamstring injury to drag on last year.

“I am not going to be able to do an awful lot about general fitness in three days but you are just hoping that when he is back here with the squad that . . . I have got a real good belief about Aidan and I want to transmit that to him.”

He will also take a look at Adam Rooney, the striker whose achievements at Aberdeen over the past year have been undermined, O'Neill suggests, by the decline in the standard of the SPL.

The 27 year-old is more than happy to be scrutinised. “I’ve had a good last 18 months,” he said. “I’ve scored a lot of goals and we’ve managed to pick up our standards. I’m happy with how it’s gone.

Disappointed “I was disappointed to miss out the last time [

when he was only named in O’Neill’s preliminary squad] but I’m happy to be in this one. As you get older, you probably think you’re going past the chance of getting the opportunity but thankfully things have gone well, and now it’s up to me to make an impression in training.”