One traumatising thought upsetting a heartening Irish performance

We're not crazy.

Ireland are not các. We could've beaten bloody Georgia. Martin O'Neill picked a brilliant side to take the field against Serbia on Tuesday night. It was billed as a must-win clash and the manager showed a set of cahonies by dropping his holding midfielders in Tiblisi, Arter and Whelan, and replacing them with David Meyler and #Wes Hoolahan. 10 minutes into the match and Ireland looked a different outfit entirely to the one that fell to a poor 1-1 draw with Georgia. 10 minutes in and there was real purpose, much more incision and there was Wes Hoolahan consuming the game, almost telepathically guiding the ball in a forward direction. 38 minutes into the match and David Meyler was stopping the ball on his own corner flag, nutmegging a Serbian and bringing the Aviva Stadium to its collective feet. Against the best team in the group, Ireland didn't cower. They went toe-to-toe with them, they put them under pressure and on the back foot and, yes, whilst the opposition broke forward on occasion too, there was enough to just keep them at bay. And we regrouped and went at it again. It's not suddenly a brilliant group of world-beating players overnight but it's a team with intent, looking to make inroads and, when the crowd see that, they'll forgive technical shortcomings every second. This is a game Ireland were sent out to win and, suddenly, it became very apparent that they were more than capable of doing just that. Watching the performance was bitter-sweet though because it was hard to rid the nagging feeling that we fecked it all up at the weekend. If Ireland have a team good enough to really frighten Serbia, they could've just went to Georgia and beat the lowest seeded team in the group. https://twitter.com/thomasniblock/status/905144925079183368 Instead, we've given ourselves the most thankless of tasks by having to topple the best when the gap with Wales would've been preserved with a simple win in Georgia. https://twitter.com/JamesjQuinn/status/905144918057795584 They've proven they're good enough and as much credit as O'Neill deserves for making the changes, he deserves criticism for the plan on Saturday. https://twitter.com/MOassistagoal/status/905144539555520512