O'Neill did well to pull victory out of the bag in Georgia. That must be recognised and, for it, he must be praised. We were on top in that game and my nervous fear towards the end was not of losing but of possibly not scoring by the time the ref blew for time. Poland beat Georgia 4-0 in Tbilisi, but I think it would be unfair to denigrate our tight result there on that basis; Georgia aren't a walkover when they're up for a game and ours was the opening game of the campaign.
Gibraltar was a picnic. Not sure how much insight can be taken from it really.
Germany was ectasy; a terrific result. We killed the game dead, absolutely stifled Germany to the point where they almost forgot how to play football and we nearly made it through with what we'd gone there for unblemished, bar a solitary lapse. When they took the lead, O'Neill made the changes necessary to get our equaliser. That must also be applauded.
He failed the Glasgow test. Admittedly, it was a close game that either side could probably have won had chances been taken, but a loss against a direct competitor, whilst not the end of the world, simply shouldn't have been on the cards; a draw would have us in a much more comfortable position right now and O'Neill failed on that account.
This is another massive test and I'm with you, geysir, in that I won't be fully convinced until O'Neill shows Poland (and Ireland, the nation) that we are genuine contenders for automatic qualification from this group. I don't think anyone has any concrete idea or certainty as to how O'Neill will approach this one as he hasn't really stamped a consistent style on things yet, but here's hoping he can prove his worth on Sunday and produce something penetrative.
I think it's a must-win and, thankfully, O'Neill has at least paid lip service to the need to attack in recent days/weeks. Failing to win won't put us out mathematically obviously but I think it'd be a good indicator as to whether or not we're up to qualification. I think a significant sense of my urgency is rooted in a desperate and weathered desire to see this team really re-plant itself in the spotlight and recapture the nation's imagination. Qualification is still very much in our own hands and I'd like for us to really grasp it by the balls. We'll see what transpires, but given our present position, it's up to us to do that, so we can't be playing it overly cautious waiting for mistakes and opportunities to arise. We must go out and make sure we create or force as many of them as we can ourselves. We need the boost after Glasgow and I fear a draw would only delay the petering out of the campaign that I think would inevitably come with such a customary and unremarkable result. Do we really deserve to go through if we can't at least look like beating our direct competitors at home? If we don't show that we're capable of doing the business on Sunday now that it really matters, I don't think we'll ever get round to doing what we need to in this group.
I'm gonna hope for a closely-fought 2-1 victory, although I fear it'll probably be a dreaded 1-1, which'll leave us thinking we did OK, but nothing to get very excited about. A loss is simply unimaginable. That'd be the end of it.
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