Brian Kerr appointed Faroe Islands manager

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Originally Posted by amaccann

But that's my point, did he really? He came into the job amid a storm of post-Saipan arguments and the worst possible start to a campaign. I don't believe that he had the circumstances or the time to impose his regime, not properly anyway, until the '06 one. But by then the damage was done I would guess.

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Can't agree, we needed to beat Russia at home and the Swiss away in our last 2 games to top the first group, he'd been in charge for well over a year and a half by then and we drew at home and were embarrassing away, he had 6 games out of 8 and the entire campaign bar 4 months. We still finished higher then we did in the '06 campaign where we managed to beat the Faroes twice and were blessed to do the double over Cyprus and they were our only wins. The only reason we were even in with a shout was due to France being garbage in qualifying till they came to Dublin. The Israel games are his legacy I'm afraid....

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Originally Posted by amaccann

But that's my point, did he really? He came into the job amid a storm of post-Saipan arguments and the worst possible start to a campaign. I don't believe that he had the circumstances or the time to impose his regime, not properly anyway, until the '06 one. But by then the damage was done I would guess.

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just different POV's then:)

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Originally Posted by amaccann

But that's my point, did he really? He came into the job amid a storm of post-Saipan arguments and the worst possible start to a campaign. I don't believe that he had the circumstances or the time to impose his regime, not properly anyway, until the '06 one. But by then the damage was done I would guess.

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Aye and the team he stuck with for the first campaign was McCarthy's. He only really made changes to the team after that campaign bringing in O'Brien, Reid, Kavanagh, Morrison and putting Duff into his best position after years of playing up front.

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Originally Posted by Drumcondra 69er

The Israel games are his legacy I'm afraid....

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And we were probably the toughest team Israel in that group. We deserved to win the 2nd match by 4 or 5. I'll say that til I die. :) It's very easy to say we drew because of the substitution. Israel's best chance of the game came in the minutes before Keane went off and they were controlling possession before Kav came on.

Being an international manager is a tough job. Charlton delivered on his first full campaign, although he had a squad of top players, any 11 he picked were playing for top teams.

McCarthy also did well in his first full campaign and nearly delivered qualification.

Kerr, ok we can forgive him the first campaign. But the second campaign, there was no sign of improvement, no sign of a chance of qualification. The Irish supporters expect more these days than also-rans. If managers can't deliver us a top two position in a qualifying group, they have to go.

I don't see what Kerr is still bitter about. He also seems to think he knows more than Trapattoni. There seems to be a cottage industry in criticising Trapattoni in Ireland.

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Originally Posted by Emmet7

Kerr, ok we can forgive him the first campaign. But the second campaign, there was no sign of improvement,

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I'd strongly disagree with that but there's no point in debating this again for the 20th time. :)

I think Kerr is bitter in that he employed very similar tactics and didn't achieve the same success that Trap has to date.

Trap has a reputation as a "lucky" manager, and you've got to say based on what's happened so far you wouldn't call him unfortunate.

The handball against Montenegro and the red card against Italy are two massive slices of fortune that I don't remember Kerr getting anything like during his tenure.

Either way, the hard part of the campaign is ahead of us, not behind us, and despite what Kerr may write, I'm sure he'll be as happy as anybody if we qualify (at least I'd like to think so).

The sending off of the Italian actually mightn't have been good luck for Ireland if you believe playing against 10 players is tougher than playing against 11.

In any case whatever Trap's critics like to say, and many of them like to say it shouldn't have been a sending off and hence Ireland were lucky, from an objective point of view it was a clear sending off. Maybe years ago elbowing someone in the face was not a sending off offence but today it is. The guy lead with his elbow when jumping and he didn't go for the ball with his head. He knew O'Shea was going to stick his head in there and so he knew what he was doing and he absolutely deserved to go, no question, it was a sickening challenge on O'Shea.

As for Trap being lucky, what about Kevin Kilbane's og, which was a bit of a fluke if you are to be honest, the Bulrgarians presented no real threat up until then, they had possession but in the final third were pretty poor and Ireland were unlucky to lose that goal.

Anyone who thinks Trap is good because he is lucky is fooling themselves. You don't win 10 national titles, 3 European club titles and many more cup competitions by being lucky.

Kerr was not unlucky, he just didn't have the experience at the top level of management. He cannot seriously be thought of as being in the same league as Trapattoni, no matter what he or others think.

To be honest, Kerr was very lucky to get to be Ireland manager and in terms of rankings and seedings we slipped badly under him.

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Originally Posted by irishfan86

The handball against Montenegro and the red card against Italy are two massive slices of fortune that I don't remember Kerr getting anything like during his tenure.

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I think you mean against Georgia. In Montenegro we were denied a stonewall penno for handball.

We got a bit of luck in Mainz - Whelan's goal - and more than a bit of luck against Georgia when they hit the inside of our post at 1-0 even before the dodgy penalty. But we had a good goal ruled out and also a good claim for a penalty turned down. We deseved to win that game quite clearly, even if the first goal was fortuitous.

I think luck has evened itself out for us so far. Italy have arguably been luckier than us - how they avoided defeat in Cyprus is a mystery. Cannavaro should have been sent off in Montenegro and on that basis you can clearly say that was unlucky for us as well as Montenegro.

Kerr didn't get much luck I agree, though the Faroes missed a great chance just before Elliott was needlessly taken down to open the scoring up there, and Kilbane's second was a wicked deflection. We were pretty lucky in that game. Albania at home was only won due to an own goal deep in injury time.

He is on Tubridy Tonight, tonight.

That tubridy interview should be on rte.ie in a day or so, they usually do make the interviews available

The interview's on the website now if anyone's interested. I haven't looked at it myself yet, I have read remarks that Brian may have had a few prior to going on?

He basically just ripped the **** out of the Faroes.

Certainly looked like he had a good time in the green room.

He didn't seem that drunk to me.

He was certainly relaxed, but to say he ripped into them would be stretching it.

They had a clip of him talking about the tough conditions of the Faroes while he was manager of Ireland, and they joked around about the weather conditions a bit, but it wasn't anything insulting.

The worst was:

(talking about the 200+ days of rain per year)

Tubridy: So it will be a sort of home away from home then?

Kerr: No, it's a lot worse than that.

Hardly insulting stuff, just a bit of fun.

There was also an interesting article in the Sunday Tribune about Kerrs move to the Faroes & how it's another grand ****-up by the FAI. The gist of it was that even if he failed as senior manager, Kerr should have been shuffled back into a technical role or another underage position rather than just turning him into persona non grata. It does seem insane that our most talented underage coach has simply become unwanted in this country & that certain people look at him as a failure.

I wonder did Trap do a similar interview on Italian TV about Ireland.

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Originally Posted by Ciaran

Kerr was a very organised, solid manager. I always felt that under him we were incredibly difficult to defeat home or away and the only competitive defeat under him was caused by a moment of Henry magic. Not trap standard but in my view he was a better manager than McCarthy and obviously Stan.

To his credit to this day he's still the only Irish manager to fully appreciate what Andy Reid can offer us.

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While I would agree with your sentiments about Kerr, we were beaten in Basle in 2003 under Kerr .. so France was not the only competitive defeat

Yes, but we were so uncompetitive in Basle it doesn't count! Kerr should probably have told them it was a friendly, they'd have fought tooth and nail for the result!

Indeed. Forget about Israel-we were unlucky in both of those 2 games.(his madness in bringing on kavanagh aside) It was the 2 games against the swiss where we needed wins to qualify and we'd still be playing those games today and not score we were that negative. He had his shot and deserved to go.

If we only finish 3rd in this group then theres the same case that Trapetoni should go as well but too soon to judge that.

Regardless of who's in charge I'd always have an open mind if we finish 3rd. It's wrong to say finish 3rd so must go.

If the signs are that we're obviously going in the right direction then I'd stay with the manager. In Kerr's case it was clear it just wasn't happening.

I think it's a terrible shame the FAI and the media set out to crucify him. I suspect him not being a career "yes man" meant the likes of Givens with no success whatsoever to his name is thought more highly of in the FAI than him. I also think it's a shame that Kerr seemingly burnt a lot of bridges with people naturally inclined to support him in the media and just generally involved in the game.

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Originally Posted by as_i_say

If we only finish 3rd in this group then theres the same case that Trapetoni should go as well but too soon to judge that.

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isnt he only hanging around for the wc anyway?