Kerr was miles better than Kenny is my scientific analysis.
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Kerr was miles better than Kenny is my scientific analysis.
The 0-0 draw in Paris was a super result and performance even then. But the habit of sitting back on leads cost us too often, and technically his time in charge saw us drop from first seeds (2004) to fourth seeds (2008).Quote:
Originally Posted by 2 Year Contract
"Somewhere in the middle" is probably the best way of putting it alright.
I agree with a lot of what you say here, but there are a few things I’d pull you up on. Firstly, in relation to Eoin Hand. I don’t think he had a weaker team than Giles, in fact I think it was a bit stronger. Brady, Stapleton and O’Leary were more experienced, Mark Lawrenson emerged (though Giles originally capped him as an 18 year old). Ronnie Whelan also came through, and Michael Robinson emerged aa a partner for Stapleton. He also had other solid pros like Grealish, Langan etc. Hand produced one of the finest ever qualifying campaigns in the WC for 1982. We beat Holland and France at home, and drew with Belgium, got a draw in Holland and lost narrowly (with the help of some “questionable” refereeing decisions in Paris and Brussels. Desperately unlucky not to qualify, failing on goal difference. For some reason the following two campaigns never went as well for Eoin Hand. We played decent football under Hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jolly Red Giant
On Stephen Keny There is no doubt that he failed. However, I think it’s grossly unfair to say “he has never demonstrated over his entire career an ability to get the best from his teams.” That’s demonstrably untrue, as evidenced by his trophy collection. You also state that he is “a run of the mill LOI manager who fell into good situations on more than one occasion.” Again, his record says otherwise. Dundalk were nowhere near winning titles before he took on the job, he got them to runners up in his first season and won the title in his second. Ok, you can say that he wasn’t able for the step up to the Ireland job, but he was clearly more than just a “run of the mill” LOI manager. There is also the argument that with the benefit of previous squads his way may have had more success. We’ll never know. There was always going to be a period of some pain while young, inexperienced players were being blooded. When assessing managers, the strength of the playing pool they have simply can’t be ignored.
Birmingham sacking Rooney could be bad for those of us that want Carsley. He was born there, played for the club and they have plenty of money to throw at him. I never bought the links with Stoke or others, but this one would concern me.
Yeah, that's a bizarre argument to make. He took Longford from the First Division to Europe, took over Bohs who had just won the double (but he'd earned that promotion), took over Derry and Dundalk when they had barely avoided relegation and turned Derry into title contenders and Dundalk into a genuinely trailblazing LoI team. The Rovers move didn't work out for whatever reason, but he clearly got the best from several teams and transformed underachieving teams more than once.Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyD
Yeah given his connection with Birmingham, the City and club it might tempt him if he's looking at club management. Though how quick they ditched Eustace who had them 5th for Rooney is a massive red flag towards the new owners.
I'm convinced there's a town somewhere in Ireland where about 4-5 foot.ie posters live amongst these devout Kennyites we keep hearing about.
Our strengths are that we have the players - if properly organised - to be solid defensively, we have genuine options with pace - to an extent we have possibly never had before - in wide positions and in attack and we have one of the most highly rated young centre forwards in world football.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
You didn't ask what our weaknesses are, but we probably all know anyway. We're desperately lacking in midfield quality and depth and we have a real problem position also at left back. We also have limited technical ability relative to many European nations, as has always been the way.
Probably not the setup for a manager who is insistent on playing the ball on the ground methodically through midfield, as we have seen. Might suit someone who prefers their teams to sit deep and play direct on the counter attack though...
I suppose the key difference between Touhy/Giles and Charlton though was that Charlton achieved tangible success, Touhy and Giles didn't. The idea that we could have been more successful in the 80s and early 90s with a different approach is highly, highly questionable. We've never managed it any other time so there's little to suggest that we would have done it then. In fact it's highly likely that our success came about precisely because we played the way we did.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jolly Red Giant
Sure, if you take the Egypt game in isolation and ignore everything else, we may well have won that game as a standalone match playing a more expansive style. But you can't just turn it on and off like a tap, had we played that way we would probably have lost the other two games and finished third in the group and either been eliminated at that point or by West Germany in a last 16 game if we had scraped through. That's if we even qualified for the tournament to begin with. I certainly doubt we'd have qualified for USA 94 for example, had we adopted an expansive approach, and probably not for Euro 88 either. It's why I strongly believe that Dunphy was wrong then in the same way that so many were wrong about Kenny in recent years.
It’s probably Kilkenny. On the one hand, you have the Kennyites worshipping at the Church of Kenny whereas on the other hand, OTOH, the rest simply thought it was the best place to kill Kenny.Quote:
Originally Posted by ontheotherhand
Wayne Rooney to managed Ireland!!!
This is how I'd rank the Irish managers during my lifetime
1. Charlton
2. McCarthy
3. O'Neill
4. Trapattoni
5. Kerr
6. Kenny
7. Staunton
I get that the ones who came later had inferior resources, but they also had an easier qualification process with the expansion of the World Cup and particularly the Euros over time.
I'd largely agree with that. Not much between Trap and O'Neill or between Kenny and Staunton. Notable again though that the managers who played more open football rank below those that went for a more pragmatic approach.
I wouldn’t change much in that list either.
MickMack1.0 played a very decent and enjoyable brand of football. Mixed the approach depending on the opposition, used the midfield two as a rule - lots of pace and trickery from the full backs and wingers. Took a natural yet progressive step forward from the one dimensional Charlton era. He had the players for it but so too did Charlton. He will always get a lot of credit from me for what he did first time round. If you look beyond just results (I’m not saying anyone should) and included an “enjoyability” criterion, there’s a very decent argument to be made that Mick would be at the top of the list. Version 2.0 probably rules that andjustment to the rankings out though. Using the same totally subjective criteria, I’d probably drop Trap below Kerr and Kenny (I know it’s a bit ridiculous but I don’t care :D) and it would also move O’Neill a little closer to Charlton in second spot.
I can’t stand Trap and what he brought to the squad mentality, to our game with good players and to the confidence of a nation. He ignored quality players that could and should have allowed us to move beyond the TBOF approach. I think we underachieved overall under him. He brought us to a tournament (courtesy of a very fortunate playoff draw - admittedly he was unlucky to have drawn France the WC10 playoff), sure, but it was embarrassing and started the schism that exists between some quarters of the media and support.
I actually enjoyed O’Neill for the most part. The last year or so (Nations League??) was turgid stuff but early on he found a way to mix the direct that brought the best out of Walters and Long with the class of Wessi and got a good tune out of players like McGeady, Hendrick, Brady more often than not. Germany home and Wales and Austria away were absolutely great moments.
Anyway… objectively the list is spot on but once you bring other factors into it, maybe it’s not quite as straightforward! My two cents. :)
I think all time, Val Harris is #1.
The framing of that play off draw as lucky always bothered me - if you think the one in four chance we had of drawing Estonia was lucky, then fair enough, but it ignores the efforts of the team over the previous two years to go from unseeded in the draw for the 2010 World Cup play off, to being seeded in the 2012 draw. If it was luck, it was luck that the team, and management, made for themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. I agree the team did well to put themselves in the position to get that lucky. Overall the playoffs were a very minor side-point I was making in the grand scheme of things, which was really just to point out how much I detest Trap.Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
I was over the moon when Trap and O'Neill were both appointed, but like you Stu I hated both by the end. I hated that they instilled the idea that Irish players can't play football and that both gave the impression that little old us were lucky they gave us their time.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
I enjoyed O'Neill for longer, the Euros were great but it went sour fairly quickly afterwards. I didn't enjoy the Euros under Trap. The pi$$ed up fans singing while we were getting a hammering from Spain was a lowlight for me and proved that most "football fans" in the country really couldn't care less about us trying to improve, and that's why I loved Kenny's ideas so much.
The worst player in our squad was the best player in his youth team or school team when he was young. They can all play football to get to the professional ranks, so I absolutely don't agree that we can't play. I do think we are in an extended transition period in the standard of our players, but no one will convince me that as a nation we shouldn't aspire to play decent football and have success. We've done it in the past and will again in the future. Kenny just wasn't capable of getting the most out of a young squad and ultimately he proved he wasn't up to the job, but that doesn't mean his aims were wrong.
Birmingham want to talk to Carsley according to Sky Sports News. John Eustace too.
You could also argue the luck was that a team as well as Estonia were in the pot to begin withQuote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Normally you'd have a 0/4 chance of a draw like that
That probably includes me then, though I'd contend that the whole argument is a bit of a straw man. In my opinion, we didn't do badly under Kenny because we were not pragmatic or because we were only trying to play expansive football. We did badly because in the end it was proven he wasn't a great coach, manifested by several weaknesses such as in-game reaction, bad substitutions, conceding the same goal over and over again, and just overall patternless play. Portugal away was as pragmatic as you could get, and it nearly yielded a famous result. France at home too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
I don't think anyone is so stupid as to think we must play expansive football as an end in itself. Pragmatic is fine, and starting with a foundational principle of being hard to beat is also fine (under Kenny we were easy to beat) but the bottom line still has to be that good players have to do good things to win games.
Edit: I just read your subsequent post. I agree that the new manager will have pace and an emerging talent upfront. That should be at the core of any manager's strategy.