SHAUN Maloney reckons the presence of one man alone will be enough to make the Republic of Ireland a tougher nut to crack at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday than they were back at Celtic Park in November - his old Wigan team-mate James McCarthy.
Martin O'Neill's side were actually deprived of their two first choice screening central midfielders, McCarthy and Glenn Whelan of Stoke City, due to injury when Maloney's spectacular late goal gave Scotland a narrow but deserved win late last year, but the Chicago Fire player knows the involvement of the 24-year-old Everton midfielder is capable of altering the dynamic for the return leg in Dublin. Once again, the Scottish-born former Hamilton Accies player - whose watchful first-half display helped shut out England in last weekend's international friendly - goes into the summer at the centre of transfer attention involving some of the biggest clubs in European football.
"It will make a big difference to them that he's available," said Maloney of the man who cost £13m when he swapped the DW Stadium for Goodison Park. "I was lucky enough to play with him for a couple of seasons at Wigan and he's had another excellent season at Everton. I'm sure they'd hope to keep him.
"I can't speak too highly of him, he could go to the top of the Premiership if he kicks on again," the Scot added. "He's brilliant at winning the ball back and when his team lose possession his pace to get back is excellent. I watched him against Manchester United recently where he showed that pace going forward. He'll be a big player for the Republic of Ireland."
Maloney has emerged as a key player for Scotland under Gordon Strachan, scoring four goals to boost the campaign to qualify for a major finals for the first time in 18 years. It is a tally which might have been five were it not for an effort against Georgia which was credited to an own goal by Akaki Khubutia. His strike at Parkhead came from a specially orchestrated set piece routine from a corner kick, but he reckons the Republic of Ireland will have done their homework this time.
"I can't see anything like that working again," he said. "Teams are aware of what other teams have done previously because there's so much video footage available now."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article