THE SCALE OF Shamrock Rovers’ task of picking up a positive result away to PAOK caught the attention of Shane Keegan on the latest episode of the Football Family, the podcast for subscribers to The 42.
“These two fixtures this week (Rovers vs PAOK and St Pat’s vs Istanbul Başakşehir) are absolutely David and Goliath stuff,” Keegan said.
“If either side can pull this off it would be a remarkable achievement.
“The fear is that both teams are comprehensively beaten and that those who are not understanding of all the factors at play are like, ‘The League of Ireland was getting too big for its boots, it has been put back where it belong’.
“No, absolutely not! They’ve overachieved by getting where they are. There’s an opportunity here to try and go toe to toe with these teams.”
In Europa League action, Rovers unsurprisingly have the tougher encounter of the two Irish sides, not to mention the stipulation of playing their opening leg away from home, with St Pat’s occupying Tallaght Stadium.
The financial contrast between PAOK and Rovers, however, is the primary cause of concern for the former Cobh Ramblers boss:
“People within the game would use the Transfermarkt site. It is reasonably reliable.
To give a comparison, they have the current Rovers squad value at €4.28m and the current PAOK squad value at just over €100m. Almost 25 times more!”
“PAOK have players with transfer values of €8m, €11m, €15m. This is the standard of players that you’re coming up against!”
Keegan added: “How does Stephen Bradley go from having two thirds of the ball in each domestic game, and the style of play that comes with that and the questions it poses, to then all of a sudden having to flip to having one third of the ball when they’re in Europe?
“The new questions that that poses to your players, it’s very hard to marry those two things. That’s the scenario that our mangers face.
“This is a massive, massive ask, as it was for Dundalk when they took on Sheriff [in 2020], so it’s not impossible.
“But it is a big ask for a team who as we know aren’t flying it on all fronts.”
If you are not already a subscriber then sign up here to listen to this podcast and enjoy unlimited access to The 42.
