Damien Delaney has warned that Ireland cannot take any risks when Cristian Eriksen lines-out for Denmark on Monday night.
The former-Irish international pin pointed the decision to play a diamond in midfield as the fatal error when Martin O'Neill's side were put to the sword by the Danes 24 months ago:
"The one thing you don’t want to do against Christian Eriksen is to go to a diamond. I couldn’t believe it when he did it at the time, because the one thing Christian Eriksen wants is space in between the midfield and the back four," he told OTB AM.
Ramsey Cardy/SportsfileThe ex-Crystal Palace defender continued, "I remember, when we used to play against Spurs, that was the only thing we used to say.
"So we used to play two number 6's to clog-up that area so Christian Eriksen couldn’t get on the ball in-between the two centre-backs and the two centre-midfield players.
"He had to go wide to get on the ball and once he went wide to get on the ball, then he couldn’t hurt you directly from there.
"If you asked Cristian Eriksen today, what’s the one system he’d want to play against, it would be the diamond."
Two on Eriksen
Damien Delaney believes Ireland will ape the approach of doubling-up on the Danish attacker.
He expects Whelan and Hourihane to pick him up - sacrificing the latter's attacking threat.
“I don’t think we will be as attacking as people are probably expecting us, to go to try and win the game.
"If you go attacking you are going to open up those spaces for Eriksen and he’s going to cause absolute carnage as he did in the last game," referring to the night he put three in the Irish net.
Delaney warned that Ireland will be "cagey," and try to frustrate Denmark while trying to, "nick the game as opposed to dominating it" - with Ireland relying on set-pieces to score.
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