He may be a 35 year old Championship player, but there appears to be almost consensus surrounding Wes Hoolahan from Irish football fans and pundits. In fact, the only break from that consensus appears to be his international management team.
The country was left generally perplexed that Martin O'Neill left the Norwich man as an unused sub in Georgia on Saturday and Ireland hoofed their way around Tbilisi, playing with just 30% possession.
This morning, former Ireland manager Brian Kerr appeared on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland and joined the chorus calling for Wes to be put into the team for tonight's must win game against Serbia.
It's not that Martin O'Neill has a lot of wonderful options. I mean, he's down a couple of players like Hendrick and McCarthy, who may well have started in the middle of the field had they been fit.
Now he has a few tired midfield players; Glenn Whelan, Arter played the other night, Robbie Brady.
Like a lot of people, I was surprised that Wes didn't get a bit of a go the other but night, but I think now, if he is fit, he should start. We need his creativity. We need his ability to find a pass. We need his ability to get on the ball, to be available for a pass, and bring other players into the game.
We can't just depend on the hoof and hope stuff. We've been outplayed, possession-wise, in all our home games so far in the group, and this is a match, if we sit back again, and just try to rely on that type of stuff, we're unlikely to get the result we need. I think with Wesley in the team, and with a few of other changes around the pitch, we're more likely, and I would say Martin is going to go for change. He needs to freshen up the team.
Outside of the absence of Wes, Kerr was also fairly scathing of the performance on Saturday night, claiming the Irish performance has no intelligence to it, and describing it as "abysmal".
There was no intelligence in how the team performed on Saturday. When we had possession, there seemed to be no clue about what to do with it, other than boot it forward towards Shane Long, and hope for the best, play off the scraps.
There was no signs of the sort of midfield play that either Martin O'Neill or Roy Keane would have done themselves, or the sort of teams they played in would have been good at retaining possession, whether home or away. I know they were in very good teams at Notts Forest and Manchester United when the clubs won European Cups, but neither of their teams would have been renowned for just humping it forward and hoping for the best, and charging and chasing and waiting on a set piece. That's how we played the other night.
It was fairly abysmal stuff for most of the game, and we've got to do better than that.
Martin O'Neill said yesterday he's not bothered by criticism, but that's pretty strong stuff from a former manager.
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