Hendrick, Arter and Brady is an astonishingly average midfield.

Like honestly, who is actually good in our squad? Not just average lower half of the Premiership standard, but actually good? Maybe Coleman? The last team that qualified for the world cup had:

Shay Given - consistently one of the best keepers in the Premiership for about a decade.

Steve Finnan - Champions League winner in 2005

Damien Duff - Would win 2 leagues with Chelsea

Robbie Keane - would go on to be our record goal scorer and would score around 15 league goals consistently for Spurs for the next 5 years or so.

Roy Keane - Captain the most success team in English football at the time.

I don't think we have a single player as good as any of those lads, or with the potential to be that good. Then the rest of the squad was filled out with guys like Ian Harte and Gary Kelly who were in Leeds teams consistently in the top 4 and made a Champions League semi final, Richard Dunne who'd be a solid Premiership defender for years, and then grafters like Kevin Kilbane, Kenny Cunningham, Matt Holland, Jason McAteer, etc.

We can talk about moving guys like Arter and Hendrick around all we like, but it's essentially moving deck chairs on the Titanic. Small nations like us essentially have to hope that a generational talent comes along and they can set their side up to take advantage of it. You see it in Wales with Bale and Denmark with Eriksen.