Poll: Stephen Kenny vote of confidence

[John83]

SkStu suggested a poll on this question.

[pineapple stu]

I think tets' idea of waiting until after tomorrow was fair, but while question is here - I'm certainly less favourable towards him than I was this time last week, but I think the problems in Irish football go way beyond the manager.

So I don't see the point in replacing him at the moment, but am leaning towards no contract extension alright.

(I wonder would he return to the 21s, where he seemed to be doing well? Probably unlikely)

[tetsujin1979]

I think we can just lock the thread until after the game tomorrow night?

[pineapple stu]

Yeah, maybe a good compromise.

Edit - actually, does that lock the poll too though? Otherwise maybe best to bin this and start afresh on Tuesday evening.

[CraftyToePoke]

SkStu suggested a poll on this question.

He what now ? That fella is asleep in his bed
I suggested a poll though.

[John83]

Yeah, maybe a good compromise.

Edit - actually, does that lock the poll too though? Otherwise maybe best to bin this and start afresh on Tuesday evening.
That may be the best idea. Let's lock it up and redo this on Wednesday.


He what now ? That fella is asleep in his bed
I suggested a poll though.
I had a PM from him.

[tetsujin1979]

Thread unlocked, voting open.
viva democracy

[Kingdom]

The poll is flawed. There’s no option to keep him beyond the campaign.

[John83]

The poll is flawed. There’s no option to keep him beyond the campaign.
The fourth option is supposed to encompass that.

[seanfhear]

And a ~ Don’t Know ! ~ Option.

[Kingdom]

It doesn’t, but it’s not a big deal, it’ll likely be the least supported option. Keep it as is.

[John83]

Well then, I apologise for the clumsy option. I don't see a way to edit a poll, and that doesn't seem like a good reason to bin this and start over.

[Kingdom]

No need to apologise.

[tetsujin1979]

Well then, I apologise for the clumsy option. I don't see a way to edit a poll, and that doesn't seem like a good reason to bin this and start over.

don't think you can

[osarusan]

I don't get why anybody would vote for 'There's no point replacing him: let him build; replace him after campaign.'

If you want to replace him after the campaign, then why not now? Just to save the money on paying him off?

[John83]

I don't get why anybody would vote for 'There's no point replacing him: let him build; replace him after campaign.'

If you want to replace him after the campaign, then why not now? Just to save the money on paying him off?
Money is one thing, lack of availability of a suitable alternative, recognition that the new guy is on a hiding to nothing jumping in mid-campaign.

[pineapple stu]

Yeah, for me it's that a bankrupt organisation can't really justify the extra expense of sacking a manager six months into a 2-year contract. It's another few hundred grand down the drain.

When his contract ends, is he the right person to take us forward? I'm leaning towards no - hence my vote - but the fact that our squad is awful and has been getting consistently worse for almost 20 years now is a big mitigating factor.

[backstothewall]

I've not voted. I just don't know where we should go from here.

[zero]

is it fair to say that if we lose to andorra all bets are off?

[ontheotherhand]

Yeah, for me it's that a bankrupt organisation can't really justify the extra expense of sacking a manager six months into a 2-year contract. It's another few hundred grand down the drain.

When his contract ends, is he the right person to take us forward? I'm leaning towards no - hence my vote - but the fact that our squad is awful and has been getting consistently worse for almost 20 years now is a big mitigating factor.

We might disagree on Bazunu but we agree here.

Is he the right man to bring the senior team instant success? No, I don't think he has it in him. He failed at Rovers under the pressure and has major flaws. When he has done well it's been in specific circumstances.

Is he a reasonably safe pair of hands for the players coming up from the 21s to be developed into proper internationals and to put in place a system that suits our players better than the run and gun approach that got us hammered by Denmark and saw us struggle to beat Gibraltar? Yeah and that's why I approved of the appointment in the first place. Our squad is years away from competing with even the 2nd tier of national sides. Football has changed and moved on and multiple generations of mismanagement by the FAI, brainwashing by Sky Sports and apathy from Irish sport fans has led us here. It's such a long road back and I don't think people realize quite how bad it is. I mean the association who runs the development of football in the country is in crippling debt with no obvious way out of it and they somehow got there by spending basically nothing on the game they were supposed to foster and develop. It's so bad it's hard to even wrap your head around it. There are green shoots with the Rovers Academy (with Desmond's help) and Bohs work with St Kevins among other good projects but when you look at the support Luxembourg and Iceland got from their central associations.....we are so, so, so far behind.

Could we do better with the managerial budget we have? Possibly but you're looking at an ex-player who no managerial experience (hi Kenny Cunningham) or maybe an assistant like Barry who wants to step up and climb the ladder a bit. It's a gamble either way. We pay Kenny less than half what we paid Mick. That's the reality. We have a Championship level squad and a League One level manager and we can't do much better for a long time unless something really revolutionary happens.

[Razors left peg]

Im going to sound completely ludicrous here.... I still think he has us on the right track.

A mate asked me last night if I thought the players respect him. Fact of the matter is that they are really trying to implement his style of play. If the senior players took the attitude of "who is he" they wouldnt be consistently trying to pass the ball out from the back and sticking rigidly to the short passing game. I think they respect him enough to listen to him. You can see they are also working very hard for the most part.

Yes I think he will probably need to become a little less rigid in how he wants the team to play but he is also learning at this level and hopefully he will evolve.

The most important reason for me thinking that we are on the right track is something I mentioned on another thread is that we are creating chances, really good chances that the players are not putting away. If we were in the situation where the results were shocking (which they are) and it looked like we would never score again Id say fair enough its not working but our build up play is very good at times which is leading to excellent goal scoring opportunities. I think it will eventually click and we'll get some good results towards the end of this campaign.

I dunno, maybe Im delusional!

[Eirambler]

is it fair to say that if we lose to andorra all bets are off?

Probably not. Most people would have said a few weeks ago that the last two results would have been beyond unacceptable and yet here we are after the window and most don't want to sack him right now. I'm sure if we fail to beat Andorra there will be some other excuse to stick with him, end of a long season, players missing etc.

Ship 5 to Portugal? Well they have Ronaldo and look at the rest of their players compared to ours, it was to be expected.

Lose in Luxembourg? Well, we couldn't beat them at home so it was always going to be a big ask in the away game.

Etc etc.

He gets a free pass that no other Irish manager ever got for some reason...

[ontheotherhand]

Not delusional but certainly refreshingly optimistic!

He could still go either way for me. He's bounced back before in his career as have plenty of other managers. He could also wilt completely like he did at Rovers although he also didn't get much time there.

[SkStu]

Any reasonable person would have recognized the challenge ahead of Stephen Kenny stepping into this job as it relates to an overhaul of our approach to playing football and the transition to a more youthful set of players. At the time of his announcement (as part of hiring Mick), we knew that this would be at least two years of transition and most reasonable people would be willing to give him that. The key question is whether we have seen things beginning to take shape and signs of a positive future and i think they are there although perhaps not backed up by "points on the board".

We need to be realistic about our current and future outlook as a footballing nation. We are paying the price for decades of mismanagement of Irish football. I did a search and I (and others) were posting for the need for us to overhaul our approach to grassroots football and the domestic league as far back as 2007 or else these days would come. And they are upon us. I wont belabour the sentiments that have already been shared by others over the last week but the only way we gain control over our destiny as a footballing nation is to accelerate the reform that is needed in our youth systems, significant investment in our domestic league and divorce ourselves from our reliance on the english leagues (and 2G Irishmen) to develop our players and provide quality to our international team. As some have said, there is no magic wand and its not simply turning it round overnight. It is the only way and it is a long term challenge that we need to grab onto and fix. Otherwise, nothing will change and any success we have will be subject to luck and external influence v strategy and self-determination. We are light years behind and this is more than Kenny and more than the two years i mentioned giving him above.

My vote was that he should be given the entire campaign before making a decision. And I agree completely with the principle behind it. It is what we signed on to and it is what he should be, at a minimum, given while we think about how we fix that actual problems that are plaguing Irish football.

[osarusan]

Torn between 'He should go' and 'Make a decision at the end of the campaign'.

I think he's had enough games to at least have learned something about the players available to him, but I don't think we have learned much at all, so many questions over players and positions still up for grabs.

I don't see any signs of improvement to be honest. What does it say when a team with Brady, Hendrick, and McClean in it, 3 lads that we'd been expecting to see phased out of things, put in one of the better first halves we've seen under Kenny.

I think he is way out of his depth, and I do believe that for 500 grand a year we could find somebody better at bringing through young players and/or transition to a better style of play.

What kind of money would say the German or French or English U-21 manager be on?

[BOOMSHAKALAKA]

Kenny is our senior manager, his job is to get the best results at that level. We obviously have major problems elsewhere but Kenny has to work with what's available and get the best out of them. Has he done that so far? Clearly not. Has he improved us from when he's taken over? Definitely not. By any metric it's been an appalling first year in charge. Can it be turned around? It can but there has been very little evidence to show that's possible so far. I think he should go now and we get someone capable in during the summer to take over. Unfortunately, we can't afford that so Kenny will have until the end of this campaign to turn things around. I just can't see it happening but I really hope he does. If not, he has to go as dropping us further down the World rankings and seedings will not help in qualifying for tournaments or the development of the game here.