The frustratingly rare brilliance of Ireland’s Aiden McGeady

If you wanted to get scientific about it, you could hook yourself up to a machine that records your rate of swearing in matches and check which player was responsible for each outburst. Heck, maybe those busy boffins from Opta already do this, totting up curses from football watchers everywhere so that they can declare with a fair degree of certainty who is the most irritating player in the world.

It would be a tricky enough thing to measure – you would need a deft weighting system, for instance, to appreciate the nuances between the emotions conveyed by different expletives – but chances are, the data would show that, once you eliminate gifted scoundrels who do not even put the effort in, petty thugs, and fraudsters who decry every single refereeing decision no matter how obviously correct it is, the most annoying player in international football is Aiden McGeady.

Not for the reason that Scotland fans will taunt him on Saturday. And not for any behavioural issues, as McGeady seems a perfectly likable guy. But for all the great things that he hasn't done. McGeady's career with the Republic of Ireland has, so far, been a parable proving that no type of honest footballer is as frustrating as the tricky winger who seldom delivers. Tall players who are weak in the air are quite annoying, as Per Mertesacker might admit, and so are attackers who are reluctant to shoot, as Mesut Özil could tell you, and attackers who are too eager to shoot, as Daniel Sturridge might add, but widemen who can habitually do the most difficult thing in the sport – beat an opponent – and then habitually botch the easiest parts provoke a special kind of dismay. It is the hope they spawn that makes you want to, not quite kill them, but shake them very vigorously.

On Saturday McGeady will likely earn his 77th cap for Ireland. He has scored five goals. That paltry return is not even the problem – after all, Damien Duff scored eight in 100 caps and Kevin Kilbane got eight in 110. The problem is that, unlike those predecessors, McGeady has not only failed to score as often as he could have, his all-round contribution has been meagre too. Duff, on the other hand, was a regular supplier of chances for others and a regular candidate for man-of-the-match awards, and Kilbane, like Tony Galvin (one goal in 29 appearances), is remembered with fondness because he provided valuable crosses and dynamism despite having a bag of tricks with a big hole in it.

McGeady has rarely been influential in matches at all, spending much of his times noodling out on the flanks, offering occasional snazzy touches and jinky runs, never doing damage, generally giving the impression that would have been more aptly named Peter, as in “to peter out”.

Martin O’Neill’s appointment as manager triggered hope that he might be able to bring the best out of a player whom he had known since his Celtic days, even if McGeady’s most consistent performances in Scotland came after the Derryman’s spell at Parkhead. McGeady stoked those hopes with a lovely performance and fine goal in O’Neill’s first match, a friendly against Latvia in 2013.

The ensuing friendlies brought no further improvement but this campaign, and O’Neill’s first competitive match, began with a beautiful promise. McGeady dazzled in an otherwise dreary team performance in Georgia and scored two exquisite goals, the second a masterpiece that no other player on the pitch – and not many anywhere else – could have pulled off. Irish fans dared to believe that McGeady, now 29, had come of age and that this, finally, would be the campaign in which he wowed opponents and shaped matches with a great flourishing of his talent. But no. At least not yet. He was ineffective in the last qualifier at home to Poland and, of course, he was ironically irrelevant in the defeat in Glasgow after being the focus of much of the buildup.

But – and here’s the rub – it is devilishly hard to give up on McGeady. Because no matter how many times he defied high expectations in the past, no matter how many of his nifty dribbles have concluded with passes that went straight to the nearest opponent or shots that struggled to even reach the goal, you still have the sense that the next match could be the one where McGeady really explodes. That sense of him being tantalisingly close to devastating is, of course, what contributes to him being him so annoying. But it also makes him admirable. Despite all the failed runs and feeble crosses, McGeady keeps trying to be special, keeps trying to succeed in a thrilling way. “Anvil McGeady,” you would call him if you’d seen the documentary about the Canadian metal band who kept gigging in their garage in pursuit of their dream of superstardom well into their 50s.

This week there are – again – teasing, possibly treacherous signs that Saturday could be McGeady's moment. He was decent in the boring friendly against England; Robbie Brady looks likely to play with him on the left, raising the possibility of neat overlaps and interplay; and McGeady has given rare interviews in the run-up, aiming impudent jabs at Scotland by declaring, with little evidence, that Ireland have an obviously better squad. His impudence is infectious, perhaps misguided. Picking James McClean would in a way be the safer option even though the Wigan winger barely graduated from the Kilbane School of Knocking the Ball Past Defenders and Chasing After It Like Bejaysis, but McGeady must play. It still feels naggingly right to believe that he will have the last laugh.

(Guardian service)