Roy Keane and Martin O'Neill: New Era or False Dawn?

As Grace Slick put it: ‘Nothing’s Going To Stop Us Now’. Well, maybe. The sudden outbreak of something resembling national euphoria in response to a 3-0 friendly victory over an atrocious Latvia may well be a little over-the-top, and we need to get a grip on ourselves and realise that there is still a wee bit of work to do before we turn up and win Euro 2016 and follow it up by winning the World Cup.

 Latvia were so shite, for want of a more sophisticated term, that it is difficult to know how much value to attach to the victory. Nonetheless, there was huge cause for encouragement in the players’ overall demeanour.
 The tactical straitjacket of Il Duce’s reign of terror having been cast off, one could witness astonishing sights such as full-backs actually being allowed to cross the half-way line, players stringing combinations of more than three passes together in a forward direction, and all manner of adventurous goings-on that would have given the Italian septuagenarian heart failure if they had happened under his watch.
 At the time of writing, Roy has been in situ for almost a fortnight without falling out with half the squad, and though regular readers will be well aware of my misgivings regarding the ticking timebomb that our assistant manager’s notoriously short fuse may well represent, all the early indications are that the players genuinely seem to enjoy playing for him. For the moment, at least.
 There was even a comic interlude in the spectacle of Keane’s excited reaction to Ireland’s second goal: there he was, the man who once said he ‘wouldn’t cross the road to watch a friendly’, leaping up and down in jubilation because we’d gone 2-0 up against Latvia in a November friendly with zero points at stake.
 Often overlooked, almost the forgotten man in all of this, is Martin O’Neill who, lest we forget, is in fact the man in charge. He cut a hugely impressive figure at his initial press conference, giving every impression of being a man with a major point to prove, his senseless dismissal at Sunderland clearly having stung his professional pride deeply.
O’Neill is frighteningly articulate. His command of the English language certainly represents something of a step up from Trapattoni’s: you could listen to him talk all night, and whatever one’s feelings about Roy, nobody doubts his considerable intelligence or passion for football.
 We have secured a second-tier seeding for the Euro qualifiers, from which 24 teams will make the cut rather than the usual 16, and there is every reason to believe in a bright new dawn ahead. The only shame is that we’ll have to wait at least another ten months for the next competitive fixture: ideally, it would be as soon as possible. But things are already looking up.
 Back in the Premiership, it appears as if nobody wants to win the thing. Foul Play’s eve-of-season investment on Manchester City is already looking a little shaky, with an alarming four defeats having been sustained in the opening 11 matches.
Manuel Pellegrini’s honeymoon has not lasted long, and he is already rumoured to have alienated the dressing room, with his ill-judged sidelining of Pablo Zabaleta. Since a large part of the stated rationale for replacing Roberto Mancini was the need for dressing-room morale to be restored, one wonders whether City have taken one step forward and two steps back in this regard.
 Early days, of course. But the defensive stats are alarming. Mancini could be accused of many things, but being Italian, he invariably had his back four extremely well-drilled. This may have led to a few too many draws in games where a three-point return was positively vital, but his teams were phenomenally hard to beat. By contrast, Pellegrini has already amassed four defeats, not far off the point where, in any ordinary season, the title would begin to look dangerously close to being out of reach.
  But this is no ordinary season, and although I would have been distressed if you’d told me before kick-off that we would be languishing in eighth place in mid-November, the reality is that City are only six points off the pace, a perfectly surmountable deficit with 27 games still to play.
 Indeed, with six entirely plausible contenders to win the whole thing, this is easily the most intriguing season in at least a decade. Manchester United have, as I’d feared, already started to churn out the wins, although their 1-0 victory over Arsenal was by no stretch of the imagination a ‘statement’ performance, with the Red Devils pinned back onto the ropes for lengthy periods of the second half.
 Spurs, despite their total failure to set the goals-scored column alight (nine in 11 games), are still legitimate contenders, with considerable squad depth likely to prove very valuable in the months ahead.
 And Liverpool? What on earth is going on at Anfield? For the first time in aeons, the Scousers look like a team who can be relied upon to do the business in style, week-in week-out, against the Premiership’s more humdrum teams. It used to be that every single game against the West Broms and Fulhams was fraught with banana-skin potential: now, the Pool are taking on these teams, scoring early, pressing home their advantage, expressing themselves freely and stylishly and, more often than not, winning with plenty to spare.   
 The only conclusion at this early stage is that there is no conclusion, that anybody who attempts to state with any certainty who’s going to win the title is bluffing. Foul Play certainly doesn’t have a clue who’s going to win it, and nor does anybody else. Which is exactly as it should be. Enjoy the season to the max. See yez all in two weeks.