Mick McCarthy believes that Denmark will prove a tough nut to crack in Copenhagen on Friday night, however, the Ireland manager still expects his side to play on the front foot in the Euro 2020 qualifying encounter.
Sitting pretty atop Group D, Ireland travel to Copenhagen with maximum points following their opening victories over Gibraltar and Georgia, but now McCarthy’s side must renew recent rivalries with the Scandinavian side at the Parken Stadium.
Ireland and Denmark have come face-to-face four times over the past 19 months, most recently in the inaugural UEFA Nations League campaign, and most memorably in the 2018 World Cup play-off, where a humiliating 5-1 defeat was inflicted on the Irish at the Aviva Stadium.
A new manager, a new campaign and a different venue for this week’s clash – the 5-1 thumping happened in Dublin, while Ireland have fared much better away in Denmark, drawing twice in two scoreless encounters in Copenhagen and Aarhus.
McCarthy has done the research, consulted with the squad’s video analyst and knows all about this Denmark side, who he claims are a "compact, organised and powerful" team, and the manager is looking for every angle to boost his side’s chances ahead of the game.
The former Ireland captain admitted that his side know Denmark better than he does himself, having played them four times, and he is hoping that they are reminded of certain things that were said about the team following the recent encounters.
Danish midfielder Thomas Delaney descirbed Ireland's football as primitive and said that competing against the Irish was akin to "opening a can of beans with your bare hands".
Compariot Christian Eriksen also painted the Ireland team in a very poor light stating that they were "scared to go forward".
"It would with me," said McCarthy, when asked would such comments stay in the players’ minds and serve as a motivational tool going into Friday’s game.
"We are all different, but I guess if you could print what they said and remind them, and so if somebody mentions it, it might just have a positive effect.
"If someone insults you, I guess you'd take umbrage at it and want to do something about it, if you could, in any positive way.
"I don't know what they said - what did they say?"
When McCarthy was told that they claimed that Ireland’s football was essentially agricultural, McCarthy replied, "well, we are from a farming country, aren't we?"
Looking ahead to the fifth game between the two sides in recent memory, the manager said that he had watched the previous matches but felt that Denmark’s recent Group D clash with Switzerland was more relevant to Friday’s game.
Denmark fought back from a 3-0 scoreline and hit three goals inside nine minutes to grab a valuable point in St Jakob-Park in Basel against the top seeds in the group, and the manager was impressed with the Denmark team’s play, their approach to the game and the resilience they showed to get fight their way back into the game.
"It was a more relevant game that I watched against Switzerland. What we did against them has no bearing on what I am going to do, to be quite honest.
"Denmark were excellent in that game. I don’t know how they were 3-0 down. They played like the home team and put the full press on and went after Switzerland," said McCarthy, speaking at the launch of the new Ireland team suit from official sponsor Benetti Menswear.
"At 3-0 down, it looked like they were dead and buried and it ended up being 3-3, so I think that tells you something about their resilience and their determination as well.
"Their strengths are that they have been playing with the same team, the same way for a long time.
"They are a big powerful team. Schone and Delaney started with Eriksen playing in behind [the striker] Poulsen on the right looks a real threat running from out to in. They are just a very, very compact, organised team, they play the same shape, the manager has been there for a while, so all in all they will be a tough nut to crack."
Yet McCarthy believes his side can still go out and play their own "front foot" game in Copenhagen, and the manager would like to see his side play like the home team at the Parken Stadium.
"If you sat and watched [Switzerland v Denmark] and asked who was playing at home, you wouldn’t have been able to tell.
"And we will endeavour to play the same way.
"I think if we play on the front foot we will have more of a chance than if we just sit back and try to soak up pressure and accept that they will have the ball."
In the aftermath of the Georgia victory in March, McCarthy spoke of how he prefers to set up his team and he revealed that he liked to have a solid partnership in the middle of the defence, with someone monitoring the number ten.
And there are few better number tens in European football than Denmark talisman Christian Eriksen, who proved the difference in Dublin that night, as the Tottenham midfield bagged a hat-trick to end Ireland’s chances of making it to the 2018 World Cup.
McCarthy knows how important Eriksen is to how this Denmark side performs and he expects that Spurs’ recent defeat in the Champions League final will have some affect on how the midfielder plays on Friday night.
"Whether Eriksen is feeling it because he lost and they didn't play very well as a team, I've no idea. Or whether he turns up and he wants to make amends for it, I haven't got a clue.
"I can't affect any of those feelings."
But what McCarthy does know is the influence that Eriksen can bring to this Danish team should he be afforded the space and time on the ball.
"They have a real specialist ten in Eriksen of course, and he doesn’t have to have that much of the ball to be a threat.
"Because when he gets it, if he gets the opportunity, the space, the time, he can find a pass. And of course his free-kick deliveries, so they are quite clearly a threat from free-kicks and corners.
"And whether we can [contain him] for 90 minutes remains to be seen. But that will be the intention."
No doubt, the manager has a plan in place to help thwart the influence of the Danish star but he would neither confirm nor deny whether that man would be Glenn Whelan, who has returned to the Ireland set-up since the new manager took over, playing a key role in the victory against Georgia.
"He was excellent in that game," said McCarthy about the midfielder’s performance at the Aviva in March.
And when pushed about whether Whelan would be selected for the Denmark clash, McCarthy replied, "you’ll find out on Friday."
