Despite none of his fringe players taking their chance to shine in last night’s 0-0 draw with Montenegro, Giovanni Trapattoni this morning insisted he is happy with the options available to him ahead of next month’s World Cup play-offs.
The identity of the opponents for the matches on November 14th and 18th will be decided on Monday, but one certainty is that the manager will not be deviating very far from the script that led his side to an unbeaten campaign over 10 games.
Martin Rowlands is unlikely to be involved against either France, Portugal, Greece or Russia, after he limped out of last night’s game with what the manager this morning suspected to be a cruciate ligament injury.
Rowlands was due to go for a scan this morning after returning to QPR but a statement on the club's website said nothing more would be known until tomorrow.
The gap doesn't look like it will be filled by Steven Reid, given Trapattoni’s reluctance to rush the Blackburn midfielder back from a long standing cartilage injury, while Andy Reid and Stephen Ireland remain in his thoughts, but that looks to be where they are staying for now.
Darron Gibson is still a “good option” and maybe the most likely to benefit from Rowlands’ misfortune, but the message is that now is not the time to be messing with the system.
Aside from the obvious achievement of securing second in Group Eight behind world champions Italy, having initially been seeded third, Trapattoni felt the need to open this morning's Q&A with the media by outlining where he thought he had brought the team since taking charge in May last year.
In the last 15 months, he said, there have been few negatives and more positives. “Silly mistakes”, like Kevin Kilbane’s own goal in a game Ireland “deserved to win” against Bulgaria, was an example of the former, but on the bright side, he has “built a good team spirit”, “discovered new players” and guided Ireland on an unbeaten 10-game run.
When it was put to him that this sequence of results saw just four wins, two against Cyprus and two against Georgia, he admitted there was plenty of room for improvement
“We can improve our self-confidence,” he said at Abbotstown today. “I know this is not enough. We achieved only 50 per cent of our job, of our aims. Only after the play-off, I think, I hope we can be happy.”
That said, he insists bad luck and inexperience cost his side points. “In two games we had the advantage. With a little bit of experience (against Italy and Bulgaria at home), we could have wasted more time.
“We spoke to the team about this situation. You can be calm, change the rhythm of the team. We spoke yesterday morning with the team. There were enough little details. Maybe we could have got one result more, it would not change the fact we're in the play-off but would give us more confidence.”
The manager has yet to decide whether to travel to Zurich for the draw on Monday. He has bad memories of the 2002 version that marked the beginning of his ill-fated campaign with Italy in Korea.
Whoever Ireland get and wherever he is when the names are pulled out of the hat, Trapattoni hopes his side is drawn away first, leaving him with a target to aim for at home on November 18th.
"Two games is okay. My experience is better to play away first game. I don't want to meet another Moreno,” he adds, referring to the Ecuadorian referee who he believes was less than impartial in taking charge of Italy's match against hosts Korea seven years ago.
While assistant Marco Tardelli admitted earlier in the week that Greece were his preferred opponents, Trapattoni is non-committal. They all have their qualities.
“We know. I have the video. I was in Portugal, Germany. I know Greece. I would not say better Greece or Portugal. It's like Formula One. One team is like the other. We're all on the same line. It's a play-off but with a final mentality.”
