4 days Ago By Owen Cowzer
ANDREW MORAN does not think Ireland can just forget about Sunday’s Wembley capitulation - because there are harsh truths to be learned. Midfielder Moran, 21, made a late appearance as the Boys in Green suffered their worst defeat in 12 years as they lost 5-0 to England . The on-loan Stoke City star came on at 4-0 with the game already as good as over from the moment Harry Kane scored a penalty moments after Liam Scales was sent off .
That Ireland then fell apart conceding a further two goals in the five minutes after that; with all the goals avoidable with better defending. And inexperienced Moran insisted that is why Ireland cannot just chalk it down to a bad day after a red card, as they need to be able to grind out results no matter what. He said: “No I don't think we can just write it off.
We need to be disappointed about it. We don't want to come here and just accept that we're going to lose. “We don't just write it off, we look back at it and see what went wrong for the next time.
“We're going to play teams of this quality at World Cups and Euros if we want to get there, so we need to learn to take points off teams like that. “When the first goes in, you're doing the best you can to try and regroup and see it out for 10 minutes and try and kill the game a little bit. “But it's obviously difficult.
10-men against a team of that quality is really difficult. It's easier said than done. “It’s a tough result but we’ll pick ourselves up.
“We’ve got to draw on the positives we can take from the first half and then look back and what we can do better in the second half. “We need to all watch it back, see what’s wrong, try and learn from it. “We’ve to work to do, obviously we’re not the finished article yet, we’ve got a group of lads who will give everything so we’ll keep trying to get where we want to be.
” The defeat has put another bad look on Ireland’s current record. After beating Finland on Thursday , the players took confidence from winning two of their previous three, having won just two of their previous nine. But the defeat also made it six defeats in the last games, after six in ten games last year as well - with just four clean sheets in that time.
Moran, on media duty along with debutant Mark McGuinness and skipper Nathan Collins after the game, has little experience of that with Sunday being just his second cap. He was introduced in what Ireland boss Heimir Hallgrímsson described as a “terrible position” given it was already 4-0. The midfielder continued: “You're trying to lift the boys as much as I can and try and provide a little spark if you can, just to get everyone's energy up.
“It was a tough time to come on, but I still really enjoyed it as it's my second cap for my country and a really proud moment.” And his focus now is on making the next step and becoming a regular. Highly-touted as he came through the underage set-up, he made his debut in Stephen Kenny’s last game in charge against New Zealand 12 months ago.
And having remained with the Under-21s for the duration of their own ultimately unsuccessful qualifying campaign, he was called up by Hallgrímsson this month. A slight calf problem meant he did not feature against Finland last Thursday before his England cameo. And Moran is keen to be a key man by next March when Ireland will be in Nations League relegation play-off action, with the draw to find out who the opponent will be on Friday.
The Dubliner continued: “Ideally you want to start games, I’m new to the group, I need to earn the trust of the manager and earn the trust of the lads around me. “The lads are sound, helped me settle in really easily to be honest. “But I’ve to work hard every day, train as hard as I can, get as many games for Stoke as I can and hopefully I can get back in the squad in March.
“You’ve got to be doing well for your club, you’ve got to always be pushing because we’ve got quality in numbers. We’ve got a lot of depth. If you’re performing you’ll get in.
“If not, there will be other lads that are performing so it’s a lot of competition which can only lead for everyone playing better, pushing each other.”.
