Ciarán Whelan believes Mayo should consider starting Aidan O'Shea at full-forward for Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final with Kerry.
The RTÉ Sport pundit feels that the presence of the Breaffy man high up the field could cause an unsettling disruption and force Kerry to rethink their tactics for the Croke Park encounter.
Whelan also said that he believes Mayo manager James Horan has been very predictable throughout the season and needs to make some changes to have a chance to compete with the impressive Kerry unit.
The former Dublin midfielder is expecting a very exciting encounter in relation to the battle between the star-studded Kerry forwards and renowned Mayo defence. However, he feels there is less competition from a Mayo perspective at the other end of the pitch.
"Who’s going to match up with David Clifford, Paudie Clifford or Seanie O’Shea?" said Whelan, speaking on this week’s RTÉ GAA Podcast.
"Mayo have great defenders, but when you look at the match-ups at the other end of the field, there’s nothing there that really frightens you from a Kerry perspective.
"We don’t know if Ryan O’Donoghue is going to play. Cillian O’Connor is back in there but he may have lost a bit of pace. He still has the smartness and the intelligence. But that sticks out as a different threat at either end of the field.
"James Horan has been very predictable but they need to do something different this weekend.
"Would he spook Jack O’Connor if he stuck Aidan O’Shea in on the edge of the square?
"Even if they put a couple of balls in in the opening ten minutes, and even if they didn’t win them, it refocuses the Kerry management mindset, distracts them and it just offers something different."
Former Kerry manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice was in total agreement with the Raheny man, stating that he believes full-forward is O’Shea's best position and suggests that such a move would have a real impact on the role of Kerry sweeper Tadhg Morley, who would have to drop much deeper.
"I 100% agree," added Fitzmaurice. "I’ve long felt that it’s his best position. And if Mayo used him in there he could be very effective as a target man, maybe not as a huge scoring threat, he’d probably score more goals than points.
"Take Tadhg Morley’s role, which has been very important for Kerry this year, and if he is setting up for a traditional Mayo attack, he is beginning as a sweeper further out, he’s playing from the top of the 'D', his job as a sweeper is to deal with runners.
"Whereas if you had Aidan O’Shea inside as a target man, Morley has to drop 20 yards deeper to deal with kick-ball inside and it creates the space outside for the runners to come in as well.
"So straight away, that little bit of a change to Tadhg’s role, it changes the dynamic for him.
"James Horan will argue that his way of playing is effective and it has got them so far but it hasn’t won them the big, big games, so I do think that they need to come with something slightly different this weekend."
Follow the All-Ireland Football Championship quarter-finals on Sunday, Galway v Armagh (1.45pm) and Kerry v Mayo (4pm), via our live blog on rte.ie/sport or on the RTÉ News app. Watch live coverage on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player commencing at 1.15pm with live radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
Follow the All-Ireland Football Championship quarter-finals on Saturday, Derry v Clare (3.45pm) and Dublin v Cork (6pm), via our live blog on rte.ie/sport or on the RTÉ News app. Listen to live radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
