Ogbene asks for squad to be left alone as pressure rises

Ireland winger Chiedozie Ogbene has stressed his wish that the players be left alone to concentrate on their approach to the remaining Nations League games in this international window after an exhausting week ended with an opening-night 1-0 loss to Kosovo for the Republic Of Ireland.

An 83rd-minute goal from Vedat 'the Pirate' Muriqi was enough to give the home side all three points.

Ireland play Israel 'away' on Sunday in the Nagyerdei Stadion in Debrecan, Hungary.

On Thursday, Ireland host Austria at the Aviva Stadium before the return fixture with Israel, where Ireland will call Serbia's TSC Arena home for the evening.

All this means Ireland will play three of their four games in this window away from the Aviva Stadium - and that one fixture comes against the Group 3 league leaders.

The build-up to the Thursday night opener in Kosovo was dominated by talk of the looming double-header with Israel.

While Lincoln loanee Ogbene stopped short of placing any of the blame of their defeat on the unusual narrative around the game, he suggested the panel could do with being distanced from the non-football talk in the run up to the remaining fixtures.

"I would like to think not," Ogbene answered when asked if he felt the Israel-centric build-up to the Kosovo game effected the players performance.

"There is a lot of discussion about things like that but we just tried to focus on Kosovo today.

"All our mindset was on Kosovo, to win this game and then deal with what's coming so I would like to think not."

Austria had the support of a full house at home in the Raiffeisen Arena as they found a pair of late goals to see off 10-man Israel 3-1 as Ireland were struggling in Kosovo.

Ogbene chose his words carefully as he expressed his wish that the players would be left to concentrate on football for the remainder of the break and indicated that the squad will discuss matters further between themselves now that the first game of a hectic week is behind them.

"I'm aware of the feelings towards [the Israel game]," Ogbene said.

"I will say, it's a complicated and very difficult task. I just want to say, I hope people don't put pressure on us to be answering difficult situations.

"There's people who can make those decisions and you can't rely on footballers to make those decisions. That's my feeling on it.

"As a group, we're going to look at it and we're going to see what we're going to do."

Click here to read article