Uefa Nations League B Group 2: Republic of Ireland v Finland (Thursday, Aviva Stadium, 7.45pm)
MATT Doherty could return to the Republic of Ireland starting line-up tomorrow night against Finland in Dublin and manager Heimar Hallgrimmson expects the Wolves full-back – and the rest of his players – to want to prove they deserve to be in his squad.
47-cap Doherty was left out of the last Ireland squad and only drafted into this one as a late replacement after Seamus Coleman and Shane Duffy pulled out with injuries.
Hallgrimmson says he has no issues with Doherty who could come into the starting line-up for a game Ireland intend to win to secure third place in the group.
“It has been quite pleasant,” he said of his relationship with Doherty.
“He is a nice guy. I hope everyone, not only him, will show that on the pitch: ‘I deserve to be here’. That is where players should be doing their talking.”
Ireland beat Finland 2-1 in October with second half goals from Liam Scales and Robbie Brady (unavailable with injury for this international window). That means there’ll be an increased level of expectation on this game as well as the pressure of avoiding a defeat that could lead to relegation to Nations League C.
“(There is) not more pressure on us than Finland,” said Hallgrimmson.
“Finland comes to Dublin and they need to win – that’s their priority and it gives us an advantage. They would probably, at one point or another, need to take more risks so we need to be clever in that sense. It doesn’t bring more pressure to us than the Finns.”
Hallgrimmson is already without Brady, Chiedoze Ogbene, Shane Duffy, Seamus Coleman and others and Dara O’Shea and Festy Ebosele could yet join the injury list.
“Dara has been struggling with some back issues,” said the Ireland manager.
“Festy as well was taken off with an injury, they are both training today but we will see how fit they are. If they can do a 90 minutes or not we will see after the training session today.
“That’s the bad thing about this kind of camp: we had eight players playing on Sunday. Yesterday was match day +2, that is normally their rest day.
“Today is the only training session we can do something physical, so we will test them to see how they are.”
