Irish manager Giovanni Trapattoni has rejected criticism that his side played too cautiously in his side's 3-2 defeat by Russia on Friday .

"In 30 years I've had many good results and bad results. It is more difficult to analyse things beforehand. If I said I had foreseen the exact situations we ended up in, you wouldn't believe me.

'My job is predicting. If I change things and we lose, then people would be asking why am I changing everything? It's normal.

'The first thing I said to the players (after Friday's game) was we will watch the game again but for psychological reasons you have to not read the newspapers.

'The players know if they played bad or well. They can't be in the right frame of mind if they're reading bad, bad, bad, bad. We cannot lose our trust or our confidence.

'It's important because, yes games are 90 minutes, but the first 10 minutes can change the game. Tomorrow is another game, tomorrow we have another opportunity. We cannot cry, we must start again.'

He will be missing Kevin Doyle for Tuesday's vital game against Slovakia .Doyle who was injured in the game and former Reading teammate Shane Long will fill in for him.