PUT 'EM UNDER PRESSURE

I know you will call me hypocritical but I believe this is the only way this limited Ireland team can get through

- Eamonn Dunphy

I KNOW people will see the irony in what I am about to do.

Yet I am going to say it anyway. Tomorrow in Dublin, Heimir Hallgrimsson’s Ireland need to take a leaf out of Jack Charlton's playbook. This is a day to Put Em Under Pressure, to win ugly, to become horrible to play against and to be efficient at set-pieces at both ends of the park.

This is what you have to do when your options are limited.

People may call me a hypocrite for writing something like this but there is a discernible difference between what my argument is now and what it was back then.

In Italia 90, Big Jack had big players. But he either left them at home or on the bench.

Liam Brady was put out to pasture way too early; Ronnie Whelan, meanwhile, was captain of Liverpool when they won the FA Cup in 1989 and was then a regular in their 1989/90 title winning side.

Yet he couldn't make the starting team in Italy.

Think about this. A goalscoring midfielder, one of the best in the business, was left to rot on the subs bench while a defender was used in his place.

Now that defender — Paul McGrath — was superb in the tournament. But McGrath would have been even more effective in his preferred centre-back position.

If that meant dropping the less talented Mick McCarthy then so be it. The bottom line is we scored only two goals in that tournament and didn't win a game and Whelan could have helped us do both.

How Hallgrimsson would love to have a Ronnie Whelan today. Instead he has Josh Cullen.

I've never been convinced by the Burnley midfielder. But the reality is that he is all we have got.