John Aldridge: Ireland don’t have to play like every other team – let’s play to our strengths

Let’s be honest, we’ve all been struggling when the international breaks come around as watching Ireland has become a little painful in recent years.

The lads pulling on that green jersey have always given their all and that’s why I’m wary of being too critical in my Sunday World column – I hate to look like a gloom merchant.

Playing for Ireland was the greatest honour of my career and all I want is to see our team getting back on a winning path, so hopefully the 2-1 win in Finland is the start of a brighter future.

I was delighted for Heimir Hallgrímsson and the lads to get that win in Helsinki and to see smiles on their faces at the final whistle warmed all our hearts.

It’s hard to remember the last time we won a real away match – not against minnows like Gibraltar or Malta – so let’s toast the moment and dare to dream once again.

What I would say at this point is that any dream needs to be a little different than what it was when I was playing in a fantastic Ireland team in the 1980s and 90s.

Heimir has inherited a squad of players that had forgotten how to win and he is starting from scratch.

The fact that we don’t know too much about our new manager also put him on the back foot when his first two matches went badly.

We were well beaten by England in Dublin last month and Greece did a good job on us a few days later.

It felt like we were just going to get more of the same under the new manager and the fact that he seemed to be avoiding press conferences and putting his assistant John O’Shea up to face the music was a terrible look.

Yet we all need to take a step back and allow Hallgrímsson time to show what he can do.

We don’t expect him to get us to the 2026 World Cup quarter-finals or win a Nations League group featuring England and a strong Greece side.

What we can hope for is to see some kind of progress and a plan in place that will take us forward.

Unfortunately, Stephen Kenny didn’t give any hope that his plan would get the best out of the players in the Ireland squad and that’s why his tenure as manager came to an end.

Now we should all get behind Hallgrímsson and his coaching team as they look to change the mood around the Ireland team and what we saw in Helsinki could be a great start.

If we can back it up with a positive performance and result in Greece tonight, then we will have some momentum behind the team for the first time in many years.

Achieving that will be tough as Greece are a good side and they confirmed that with a deserved win against England at Wembley on Thursday night.

In many ways, Greece could be used as a blueprint for what we should aim for and I go back to their 2004 European Championship win when I make that point.

They were not the best team in that competition by a long way, but they found a way to play that gave them a chance to compete and that’s what Hallgrímsson needs to do with Ireland now.

After watching Ireland’s win in Finland, I saw some highlights of England’s game against Greece at Wembley and it showed how nearly every team in world football are playing the same way.

All the managers have been on these coaching courses and they all get a blueprint of how football should be played and every team sticks to it.

They play out from the back, draw the opposition in, try and beat the press and build their attacks from there.

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City can play that way and Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool scored some incredible goals with thrilling football sweeping from one end of the field to the other using those tactics.

Yet that magic happened because some of the best players in the world play for City and Liverpool.

When I saw Greek defenders playing balls back to their keeper on their own goal line and hoping he had immaculate control, I scratched my head wondering who believed this approach was a good idea?

Then you see England keeper Jordan Pickford trying to play as a sweeper, tripping over the ball 35 yards from his line and nearly conceding a goal and it’s hard to explain.

England boss Lee Carsley should have bloody hammered Pickford for his antics at Wembley, but he won’t because every manager plays the same now.

I see lower league teams in England trying to play this perfect football and I blame managers for encouraging players who are not good enough to line out for the best teams in the world to play like this.

So my message to Hallgrímsson and the coaching staff today is we don’t need you to follow the script every other manager is using in the modern game.

There are other ways to play football and while I’m not saying we should smash long balls at the opposition and hope for the best, why not mix it up a bit when the time is right?

Let’s make the best use of the players we have and use them in a way that gives us a chance to compete and see where it takes us.

There is nothing more we would all love than to see us winning matches again and don’t think for a second that every victory we achieved when I was playing in Jack Charlton’s team was achieved playing silky smooth football.

No, we did what we needed to do to win and in sport, that’s what it’s all about.

The best managers understand that and hopefully Hallgrímsson can give us all something to shout about over the next couple of years.

Evan-sent goal tonight would be most welcome tonight

We were daring to believe Evan Ferguson could be Ireland’s saviour this time last year – and he still can be in future.

To offer some perspective here, I was an apprentice toolmaker when I was Ferguson’s age, so what he has achieved already in the game is highly impressive.

He will celebrate his 20th birthday next weekend and will do so knowing that he has what it takes to play at the highest level of the game.

Yet he is also coming up to the one-year anniversary of his last goal for club and country and I can only imagine how that is making him feel.

I used to lose my marbles if I went two games without a goal, so I can’t imagine how Ferguson is feeling to have gone this long without hitting the target.

For those of us looking in from the outside of his world, it looks like his game has fallen off a cliff in the last year as this lad looked to be the real deal when he broke through at Brighton.

I know he’s had some injury problems and that can hamper a player, but we need him to snap out of it as Ireland need him to be one of our leaders over the next decade.

He is tall, powerful, has a good touch and can be the striker we have been waiting for since Robbie Keane made his exit from the stage.

Hopefully Ferguson can get a goal in Greece tonight to get the ball rolling again and if he isn’t going to get regular action at Brighton, he should consider moving on in January.

A move to a club like Ipswich could be perfect for him to get back into regular action and I’m convinced the goals will come for Evan if he is playing every week.