Republic of Ireland midfielder Glenn Whelan is confident Giovanni Trapattoni's men are capable of topping Group B in their European Championship qualifying campaign. Video by Peter O'Doherty, Article by Frankie Lally

The 26-year-old Stoke City player insists the Irish will be looking to win the group and qualify automatically for the tournament which will be hosted in Poland and the Ukraine in 2012.

Ireland will more than likely battle it out with Russia and Slovakia for top spot, both of whom are ranked higher than The Boys in Green in the FIFA world rankings coming in at 16th and 27th respectively. However despite this Whelan believes Ireland are more than capable of causing a surprise.

“I think we're not going into any campaign thinking 'let's go for second'. We're definitely going for top and hopefully that will be the case. We know we have some tough places to go to and we're going to have some tough games but we can only worry about ourselves and that's what we're going to do.

Qualifying for Euro 2012 kicks-off on Wednesday when Ireland travel to Armenia. While the Stoke City man knows it will be a hostile in Yerevan he believes Trapattoni and his back-room team have them more than ready for the task.

“The staff will have them [Armenia] watched and will know the players and the players we have to be careful of. We need to worry about ourselves and the manager mainly just worries about us and what we do.”

Few can forget how Ireland were denied qualifying for the World Cup in South Africa but Whelan believes the hurt and disappoint of the defeat to France has made them even hungrier for success in this campaign.

“I think because of what happened in the last campaign everyone was just hoping for this to come around as soon as possible. Hopefully with this campaign here everyone can forget about what happened in Paris,” he concluded.