Martin O’Neill has been vocal in his criticism of the quality he has at his disposal with the Republic of Ireland.

The Ireland manager highlighted the lack of striking options who guarantee goals for the Boys in Green at international level and said his current front men are no match for the retired Robbie Keane – Ireland’s all-time record goal scorer.

Joe Molloy was joined by Cliona Foley and Mick O’Keefe on the Sunday Paper Review and the duo agreed O’Neill should take a more positive approach to build the confidence of his players.

“It often strikes me as well, I rarely hear O’Neill talking with enthusiasm about young new players. We have an Irish U-17 team in the quarter-finals of the European Championships tomorrow,” Foley said.

“You would like a little bit more positivity from him as the manager.”

O’Keefe pointed to Northern Ireland and Wales as role models for Ireland to learn from in making the most of the talent at their disposal.

“We are what we are. What we want is a manger who is going to give the fans optimism, get a team organised and go out and give it a lash,” O’Keefe said.

“We’re not expecting to win the World Cup and we know we don’t have the players of 20 or 30 years ago. But we don’t need to be constantly reminded of that. You just need to look up north and what they and Wales have done with a far lighter squad and they make themselves competitive.

“They have similar sized resources. Give us something to get excited about.”

Joe also highlighted the disappointing careers of Darron Gibson and Aiden McGeady as missed opportunities for the Irish international side.

And O’Keefe shared his sentiments about Gibson and McGeady.

“You don’t want to look back at careers and wonder why they didn’t fulfil their promise,” O’Keefe added.

“McGeady was one of those guys where there was a lot of talk about him as a teenager but I don’t know if he has reached his full potential and Gibson is another one.”

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Written by James Hopper