Troy Parrott hits rough patch at Real Betis as goal drought extends to eight games

Going into yesterday’s La Liga game away to struggling Elche, the Real Betis manager Manuel Pellegrini was at pains to dismiss any suggestion he was losing faith in Troy Parrott.

“Parrott brings a lot to the team,” he said ahead of the match. “We have the same confidence in him as when he scored two goals in crucial matches [in early September, against Real Madrid and Lille]. He’s maintaining a consistent level, and the goals will come sooner or later.”

Yesterday, Parrott was handed his third start in succession which is a positive development in itself considering the higgledy-piggledy nature of his appearances in recent weeks. But his goal drought has still stretched to eight games, having failed to score since the 1-1 draw with Israel during Ireland’s last international window.

Against Elche, he shaved the post with a low shot but was withdrawn with 12 minutes to go, at a time when the game was scoreless and in the balance.

So Parrott was an onlooker when Betis took the lead just three minutes later and then sealed a 2-0 win in the 89th minute to stay fourth in the table. He is not catching breaks of late, albeit in a team that doesn’t always play to his strengths.

By now we know that Estadio Deportivo, the Seville-based sports daily, likes to dish out withering, L’Équipe-style player ratings and Parrott’s 3/10 in Wednesday’s Champions League defeat to Borussia Dortmund was a particularly sobering brief. The theme of the newspaper’s recent assessments is that games have passed the striker by.

In delivering a 4/10 for yesterday’s efforts, Estadio Deportivo wrote: “He was more visible than in previous matches, more dynamic at the point of attack and had a great chance with a half-turn, but he is still not accurate and sharp in his actions, and he prolonged his scoring drought.”

After a breathtaking start to life in Spain, these are certainly trickier times for the 24-year-old to negotiate but, as the Ireland squad gathers in Dublin today, would anyone really bet against him rediscovering his scoring touch in this particular shade of green, when Ireland go to Austria on Saturday before hosting Kosovo next Tuesday in the Nations League?

Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrímsson is tweaking operational aspects to this camp to bring some freshness to the fold as he does not want it to feel like a continuation of the previous window, which was a trying one for all involved on the back of those Israel games, and all they entailed.

Captain Nathan Collins missed those through injury but is back this week, albeit without too much Premier League action to shout about. The 45-minutes he got off the bench in Brentford’s 2-0 defeat at Brighton yesterday – where Caoimhín Kelleher played throughout – were his first in the league since early September, but a timely development all the same.

Dara O’Shea got a full 90 minutes in Ipswich’s 2-1 home defeat to Bournemouth, as did Liam Scales who got Celtic back to winning ways in the Scottish Premiership with the only goal in their win over Kilmarnock.

Jack Moylan continues to deliver at club level and can therefore expect to play a prominent role against Austria and Kosovo. The springer in Hallgrímsson’s pack, he scored his fourth goal in two games with a penalty in Cardiff City’s crazy 5-4 weekend win over Burnley, having been 4-1 down at one point.

“Whatever we sold Jack Moylan to Cardiff for, we missed a ‘0’ off the end of the fee,” posted one down-in-the-dumps Lincoln City supporter on social media after seeing the former Shelbourne star – dubbed ‘The Magic Man’ – continue to produce trucks in his debut season in the Championship.

Goals were scarce among this particular Ireland squad, with Jayson Molumby the only other scorer in West Brom’s 3-0 win at home to Millwall.

Hallgrímsson chose not to include Jamie McGrath this time around despite his fine form for Hibernian and after scoring in the Scottish League Cup semi-final win over Hearts a week ago, he hit the mark again with a thunderbolt opener in Saturday’s 4-0 rout of Aberdeen.

“It was a lovely weighted pass and thankfully my touch was all right and I let one fly,” he said. “It was important to get our noses in front and go get that second. We were fully deserving of the win and our hard work is starting to pay off.”

For now, McGrath must make do with a place on Ireland’s standby list as the Boys in Green face into their final act of the calendar year but, for now, it looks like Hallgrímsson’s squad has emerged injury-free from the weekend.