Shelbourne giving game away before the fact

On Soccer: Pat Fenlon may have returned from France over the weekend talking up Shelbourne's chances of beating Lille to make the group stages of the UEFA Cup but if the mind games that usually precede this sort of game are anything to go by then the Dubliners are going into Thursday's first leg at something of a disadvantage.

It is one thing for a team's manager to publicly express confidence in the build up to a big game but quite another for his club to act like they seriously believe they can do well enough to progress. Very little that has happened over the past couple of weeks suggests that anyone in Drumcondra seriously anticipates still being involved in Europe beyond the end of this month.

In the days leading up to Shelbourne's Champions League games against Deportivo La Coruna a few weeks back Fenlon was similarly upbeat about the Dublin club's prospects of pulling off a surprise but the fact that his employers had sought to switch the order of games so the first leg would be in Dublin and then moved that match to Lansdowne Road pointed to the fact that at board level, few privately shared his publicly-expressed belief that the Spaniards could be beaten.

The point couldn't have been lost on Deportivo coach Javier Irureta. In previous rounds against KR of Iceland and Croatia's Hajduk Split, Shelbourne had derived considerable benefit from playing their away legs first and the reason for requesting the switch in the order of the ties against Deportivo was obvious: if the team took a hammering in the first leg the television rights to the second would be dramatically devalued and the gate greatly reduced.

Moving the game reinforced the impression that the Dubliners, like so many Irish sides before them, were grabbing what they could from a tie they expected to lose.

It is, of course, difficult for those of us who do not spend every waking hour organising golf classics, raising sponsorship or selling Lotto tickets to be critical of the club officials involved, particularly in view of how well the strategy paid off financially.

Shelbourne admit to having made some €400,000 from the Deportivo games, a colossal sum by Irish standards, and having publicly accepted the decision to relocate the home leg away from Tolka Park with considerable professionalism Fenlon and his players emerged from the game at Lansdowne Road with a good deal of credit after performing strongly in front of more than 20,000 supporters.

What they never really did, however, was threaten to win the game, with the locals only producing a couple of half chances over the 90 minutes and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this failure to pose more of a threat was down, at least in part, to Fenlon's persistence with the rather cautious tactical approach adopted in the previous round against a strong Croatian side.

For all we know it may also have saved the Irish side from a home defeat but realistically, a goalless draw was never likely to be enough to get the eircom League side into the hugely lucrative group stages of Europe's major club competition.

For Deportivo, this was the first competitive game of the season and it would have been interesting to see how they would have coped against a more attacking side at a packed Tolka Park.

Obviously the defensive formation with one man up front succeeded admirably against KR and Hadjuk, it was hardly likely to do the trick against the accomplished Spaniards.

Though they had their chances to score against the run of play in the return leg, Shelbourne ended up being beaten rather clinically by a side whose coach and players had clearly benefited from two additional weeks of pre-season training.

On the face of it things look even tougher in some ways for Shelbourne this week as the French are comfortably into their campaign, while the absence of Alan Moore and Stuart Byrne due to suspension on Thursday night will be a major blow for the home side.

But the decision to play once again at Lansdowne Road may well prove a greater blow still. Hopefully, the place will be sold out again although the relatively less than star-studded Lille squad combined with UEFA's Cup lesser standing make the occasion a somewhat harder sell.

Even if it is full, though, the switch to Ballsbridge only makes sense in strictly monetary terms for few teams with serious ambitions to stage the sort of upset required by Shelbourne would move a game like this out of their home ground - one rather well suited as it happens to discomforting a more highly ranked side - and into a national stadium.

One consolation is that with the TV deal that was partly responsible for prompting the move having fallen through the 5.30 kick-off that was agreed to suit French couch potatoes has been abandoned and the game will now start at 7.0, thereby enabling more of the Dublin club's actual supporters to make it along.

Though they clearly operate in a stronger league, have deeper pockets and possess some talented players, there is little enough about Lille to inspire any great awe ahead of the game. Until Irish clubs are in a position to maximise what few advantages they possess, however, and target victory without being handicapped by the fear of defeat visitors like these will always arrive here suspecting that they already have the upper hand.

Shelbourne skipper Owen Heary has been named as the Eircom/Soccer Writers' Association of Ireland Player of the Month for August.