ANALYSIS/MARK LAWRENSON: A friendly with Russia seems a decidedly odd concept when I recall one of my favourite memories of Bob Paisley, our manager at Liverpool.

It concerned a European Cup tie in Moscow and a pre-match cup of tea.

The Cold War was alive and well at the time and with usual Russian efficiency, there was this guy looking after our dressing-room.

"Tea!" we piped up, by way of following an established Paisley tradition.

We were at the milk and sugar stage when Bob came in.

"What this?" he stormed, as mad as I'd ever seen him. "How often have I warned you never, ever to drink the water. They could have done anything with it."

"But they've boiled it; it's tea," we protested.

"Makes no difference," Bob insisted, with a good, healthy paranoia.

In a way, I can't see the Irish performance tonight making much difference to our World Cup prospects. Sure, you have to play friendlies by way of warming up for the main event. Sure, they're better than training. And we can assume the Russians will send out a useful side. But I can't see it answering any key questions for Mick McCarthy.

Looking at the squad of players we have available, it's clear that our biggest problem is finding a suitable pair of strikers. We've got Robbie Keane, Damien Duff, David Connolly and, of course, we have Niall Quinn. And Clinton Morrison and Richard Sadlier will be attempting to stake late claims. McCarthy's must settle on the right combination before June comes around.

With his performances at Sunderland becoming increasingly fewer, Niall (Quinn) is clearly coming to the end of his career. Perhaps after an end-of-season break, he could be wheeled out for the first game. But I seriously doubt if he can go through three games in 10 days, especially at the highest level.

That leaves Robbie Keane, who's not in the Leeds team at the moment and who doesn't look as if he can push Robbie Fowler out.

I don't think Fowler and Keane as a likely striking partnership for Leeds, given the key role Mark Viduka plays there. After a meteoric rise,

it's now clear that Keane took the wrong decision in going to Milan. Though he can be cheeky and effective when his confidence is high, he's been betraying a loss of sharpness of late.

Duff has done very well playing off a striker, but he, too, has hit difficult times. That's been mainly to do with the recent poor run by his club, Blackburn, which is certain to have shaken Duff's confidence. These considerations, especially the availability of Quinn, are going to be the biggest factor in all our friendly matches building up to the World Cup.

Against that background, tonight's result doesn't matter all that much, though it's obviously nice to win. If Russia beat us 2-1, so what. How can we place importance in the outcome of a match which could see 36 players in action?

CURIOUSLY, I don't think our lads will even benefit all that much from the process of getting together. Team spirit is something we've always had in spades. I believe that if we played no warm-up matches and met up only two days before the World Cup, we'd still have that camaraderie.

Going into tonight's match, I'm sure Mick McCarthy has 85 per cent of his World Cup team in his head. In fact I think it's fairly obvious to most people, given the players who are available. But I'd be amazed it he weren't worrying quite a bit about the forwards.

With Niall Quinn in there, you can pick anybody to play off him. However, I don't think that Connolly and Keane would work. On the other hand, Duff and Keane could be the answer. But the permutations are very limited.

And along with the forward problem, I have

this gnawing concern that when we get to the heat of Japan and Korea in the summer, it's going to be walking football. Which isn't us. We are very, very good at pressing teams and forcing teams to hurry, but conditions in the World Cup may prevent us from doing that.

Unfortunately, I can't see tonight providing us with answers to these questions.

In an interview with Dermot Gilleece