'There's definitely been a change' - Stephen Kelly on early signs of the Heimir Hallgrimsson effect taking shape

Former Republic of Ireland defender Stephen Kelly says he is seeing signs of a definite change towards a slightly more direct approach under Heimir Hallgrimsson.

The Icelandic native is now four matches into his tenure as Boys in Green manager, with last Thursday's 2-1 Nations League win in Finland marking a first victory of the new era as he stuck to the back-four system that he had moved to for the second of the September games.

Ireland came back down to earth in Greece on Sunday night in a 2-0 defeat in which they were largely dominated by the hosts, aside from short spells in the second half.

Both the Finland and Greece games were characterised by costly errors by Nathan Collins and goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher, but aside from those unforced errors, RTÉ soccer analyst Kelly is encouraged by what he sees as elements of Hallgrimsson's mooted back-to-basics approach starting to take shape.

"There's definitely been a change," the former Tottenham and Fulham full-back told this week's RTÉ Soccer Podcast.

"Even just down to Caoimhín kicking the ball and you see how many times yesterday that from a goal kick he turned down the option to play it short, and played it further up the pitch.

"Listen, I'm all for us playing the right style of football but you do it at the right moments.

"Our best bit of play, we played across the back, (Liam) Scales played a forward pass. But it's playing forward, it's not a sideways, backwards, which cause you problems.

"The two goals we gave away, that we gifted to Greece and Finland, were playing sideways and backwards, and we got caught, we got pounced on because every single team in world football wants to press now.

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