If anybody had doubts about the importance of Harry Arter, the Bournemouth midfielder, to the Ireland set-up, they should be dispelled by the phone call that Martin O’Neill made to the player on the night of the draw for the European Championships in December.
It was a big day for both men; O’Neill had enjoyed being back on or near the top table of European football, which included doing an intensive round of interviews with the world’s media in Paris, while Arter had just come through a draining day in which Bournemouth had conjured up another unlikely victory, this time over Manchester United at the Goldsands Stadium on England’s south coast.
Arter’s emotions were particularly raw as he had played in the game only three or four days after he and his fiancée, Rachel, lost their child, who was stillborn.
O’Neill kept the phone call short, noting the extraordinary effort that Arter had put in against United and passing on his condolences at the loss. O’Neill passed on his best wishes again when he attended Bournemouth’s FA Cup game against Portsmouth, in which Arter was left out of the squad altogether by Eddie Howe.
The Bournemouth manager is treating Arter’s situation sensibly and sensitively. He subsequently left the player out of the squad again when Bournemouth lost in the fifth round of the FA Cup to Everton at the end of last month and is aware of the need to protect the player from his own enthusiasm as much as anything else.
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O’Neill will have some delicate management of his own to do over the next few weeks. Arter hobbled off with an Achilles tendon problems in the Barclays Premier League game against Southampton on Tuesday night, but with only one cap to his name, against England last June, he is desperate to get more than a toe-hold on his place in the Ireland squad and is determined to make himself available for the double bill of friendlies coming up against Slovakia and Switzerland this month.
Perhaps there should be a conversation between Howe and O’Neill about how best to handle the situation as O’Neill will also be anxious to give Arter a good chance to see how he performs in a green shirt. The player pushed himself through the pain barrier in the game against England back in June when he had a groin problem.
He subsequently had all sorts of injury problems, which strongly suggested that he should never have turned out against the country of his birth in the first place. Arter ended up missing the first 12 weeks of the Premier League season, but his performances since he got back into the Bournemouth first team in his maiden Premier League season will have confirmed to O’Neill and Roy Keane, his assistant, that they have a real player on their hands who may just be good enough to give Ireland an edge at the European Championships in France this summer.
O’Neill’s thinking successfully evolved during the qualifying campaign to the point where he had ditched his beloved wingers. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Arter could push the likes of Jeff Hendrick, who has done well under O’Neill but is having mixed fortunes with Derby County in the Sky Bet Championship. Arter and Alan Judge, the Brentford attacking midfielder who has scored 14 goals in the Championship this season, are the outstanding candidates to make the breakthrough into the squad of 23 that O’Neill will take to France, particularly if we take the manager at his word that he will show a bias towards players getting regular game time for their clubs.
Arter will have Harry Redknapp to thank to some degree if that comes about. Redknapp is a friend of Scott Parker, who is married to Arter’s sister, Carly. It was while attending a Fulham match in December 2014 in which Parker was involved that Redknapp introduced Arter to O’Neill in the stadium car park. For O’Neill, who had been decrying the lack of talent coming through the Ireland ranks, this was an unexpected boost, even though Arter had played at under-age level for Ireland before losing contact with the international set up.
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Since then, O’Neill and Keane have been watching closely as Arter first helped Bournemouth to the Championship title last year and is now playing a big part in a season in which they look capable of winning enough games to stay in the top flight.
Signed from Woking by Howe for £5,000 in 2010, Arter has endured tough times at Bournemouth, including a spell where supporters were on his case over his poor disciplinary record. However, he has always showed for Howe in the manager’s two spells at the club in recent years. Arter is on the cusp of doing the same for O’Neill, who has also managed him well so far.