Eamon Dunphy believes that the day of reckoning has arrived for Aiden McGeady and is adamant that the Ireland winger must leave Everton this month.
The RTÉ soccer pundit understands the dilemma that the Ireland midfielder is going through with his club but believes that the ex-Celtic man has a responsibility as a professional sportsman to go elsewhere and get his career back on track.
“For Aiden, the day of reckoning is coming again,” Dunphy said, speaking on RTÉ 2fm’s Game On.
“He is not going to have another major championship in him. And every day he sits on his backside and doesn’t play, he is losing a day of what will probably be the most fruitful thing in his life.
“So he has got to come to terms with where he is. And there is more to life than money. I think he should go.
“Does he want to play for Ireland? He should want to get away and play six months in the Championship or wherever it is, take the wage cut and be a player again.
“If he sits on his backside for six months...I don’t respect that. I can understand it, but I wouldn’t really respect it.”
Dunphy believes that McGeady needs to move on to play meaningful football and can empathise with the player as it is a dilemma that the former Ireland international encountered throughout his own career as a footballer.
“I left places in my career where I took pay cuts so that I could play meaningful football; and that’s the word, meaningful," he said.
“And I think if you don’t do that, you lose your own self respect, you lose your competitive edge and it’s no good.
“I’m not unsympathetic to him in a certain way, but in another way, I am. You have to have your pride as a professional sportsman. You have to get up in the morning and want to work.”
But Dunphy believes that other factors might be playing their part should McGeady dig his heels in and stay with the Goodison Park outfit.
“I think that Aiden McGeady should think about more than his salary.
Here’s the question though: McGeady has an agent that gets part of his wages, so what is the agent saying? ‘Take a 50% wage cut to go to Sheffield Wednesday’.
“Or is he saying, ‘you sit there, Baby’.”
