'My heart sank': Kenny Cunningham 'flummoxed' by Hallgrimsson's tactical set-up

However, the former Ireland captain didn’t feel this was the case on a night that saw Hallgrímsson’s charges falling two goals behind inside the opening 15 minutes before eventually rallying to a claim 2-2 draw against their 10-men opponents.

“I focus on the Hungary game actually, to be honest. More so than the Armenia game. That opening half against Hungary, because that kind of shocked me. Not so much the fact we were 2-0 down and not playing well. That can happen, but just in terms of our set-up and how we actually tried to play in the game. That was a big surprise to me,” Cunningham remarked at a Premier Sports media event held at The Grayson in Dublin yesterday.

“I've got a lot of time for Heimir, to be honest with you. He spoke about an Irish team now playing to their strengths. Playing in a manner in which the players feel comfortable and we can actually get the very best out of them. So this was great to hear because I thought ‘yeah, this is why Heimir was brought in.’ Really, wasn't it?

“To move away to an extent from how we had played under Stephen [Kenny], who had a very fixed idea in terms of how he wanted the team to play. So Heimir was brought in to go down a different route. I felt if you look at the success he had with the Icelandic team, collectively got the very best out of them. Playing their own way with their own kind of identity.

“That philosophy kind of made sense to me in relation to the players, the core group of players we had available to us. It was a slow burn over the year, but I felt we'd arrived at a point now off the back of what Heimir said this week that we were going to see it. This was going to be rolled out in the game against Hungary.”

Yet as Cunningham explained further, what he expected to see from Ireland from the word go against the Hungarian was in stark contrast to how he saw events unfolding.

Despite eventually coming back to earn a share of the spoils, there were many commentators who saw this game as a missed opportunity and following their 2-1 reversal away to Armenia earlier this week, the prospect of Ireland featuring at next year’s World Cup finals now appears to be an unlikely one.

“Two minutes into that game, we got possession of the ball for the first time. We pretty much lined up 4-4-2, but as soon as we won possession of the ball for the first time we swivelled into a back-three. Two full backs went high and wide. Two wingers came into the ten positions, into that box shape in midfield and Evan [Ferguson] on the top of that. That's how we tried to play and work our way up the pitch,” Cunningham added.

“That's when my heart sank, because I thought this style of football. This patient, probing football, passing your way up the pitch, is something which I haven't seen any Irish team do successfully over the past five or six years.

“I was kind of flummoxed a little bit into thinking why this group of players with the individual qualities that they have, still think we can out football teams and move the ball from back to front up the pitch in that central area of the pitch with the limitations we have. So that was the massive surprise for me, that Heimir set his team out to play that way.”

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