QuoteAh, good old "Mice" Walsh as some foreign TV station put up his name in an international many years ago.Originally Posted by RiffRaff
I remember him getting what was Goal of the Year in 1975 (only remember the year because I found it on Youtube)
Yeah I saw a very cool article on him yesterday where he goes into his Irish roots in depth and how they used to play 7 a side football when they went over to ireland for their summers. Both parents Irish. Mayo I believe.
Anyway he has "signed" for Everton.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Ah, good old "Mice" Walsh as some foreign TV station put up his name in an international many years ago.
I remember him getting what was Goal of the Year in 1975 (only remember the year because I found it on Youtube)
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
RIP Joe Kinnear! Wonderful guy and a decent bloody manager when all said and done.
Damn fine manager in his best years. If we had someone as good as him now to manage the Irish team ~ I'd be happy with that.
Oh yea - the perfect fit for Wimbledon at the time.
Mark Kennedy about to be sacked by Swindon. We seem to be as bad as producing managers as we are at producing left backs.
Jim Goodwin has Dundee United back in the SPL and sitting 4th, in some better news, looked like his career was going a bit backwards after the wheels fell off at Aberdeen.
Kennedy is as clueless as a manager as he was a player - bundles of talent, no idea how to use it.
He certainly made poor use of the natural talents he has as a player anyways.
On Irish managers, Stephen Kenny’s title charge ended tonight. Took over in 7th place.
Absolutely wild to think back to August when he was 20 points off the front - that they’d have made that push.
Caught up 16 points on Shels, 17 on Derry and 12 on Rovers.
Whether that means the quality of management in LOI is so poor that he can swan in and transform a team, almost take them to Europe and almost win the league from a huge deficit. Or alternatively, he’s a really good manager where it didn’t work out with Ireland for who knows what reason.
Working day to day, vs for short windows sporadically, it's practically a different job would be one takeaway I have, much easier to build something with a consistent group week on week. The run in Europe especially was very impressive. Pat's have won 9 of their last 10 league games, with a LSC cup victory thrown in there too. If they beat Sligo on the final day they'll have beaten every team in the league consecutively, and if there were another few rounds to go, it'd have been their title.
Duff has made comments recently about hating international coaching too, club work seems to suit him and his mindset. Shels are a relatively limited team, especially since losing Molloy and Jarvis, but he's built something very special there in a short number of years.
Meanwhile with Bradley, I've always had some doubts about him in Europe, but so far so good for Rovers really, they might still win the league too. The gulf between Rovers and Larne in Europe during the week was far wider than I expected. His record domestically is of course excellent, they've struggled a bit this year, and had a lot of injuries, but have been unbeaten for a while now except for losing to Pat's.
Higgins at Derry is the one there has to be some questions about, the league was there for them and they couldn't do it.
Last edited by Acornvilla; 26/10/2024 at 11:33 AM.
I posted at the time he took the Pats job that it wasn't going to look great for other managers in the league if he did well. Especially as a couple of them were sniping at the FAI in the media at the time for not being considered. Thankfully they were left to their sniping.
Maybe even not such a good look for the league as a whole. After all what does it say if the worst permanent manager in the history of the Ireland team goes straight back to the league and is a standout again straight away at that level?
Of course it's a bit more nuanced than that in reality. Kenny was (to be honest somewhat stupidly) trying to completely re-engineer the way the Ireland team plays. But, since we didn't have the players to play that way successfully at that level, that was his first mistake and he only compounded it from there by refusing to change his approach regardless of how obviously unsuitable it was. He is helped at club level in the League of Ireland by having more time to work with his players - and of course also by the lower standard across the league.
But the bottom line for the likes of Bradley, Higgins and Duff is that, if the likes of Gus Poyet were able to school Kenny to that extent, how is it that they can't do likewise?
I think another factor is that Kenny knows the other LoI teams inside out, like down to what the players like to eat for breakfast level. That's an entirely different prospect from int football.
Pat's also made a couple of key signings, while another couple of critical players returned from long term injuries, the team they have now, is much stronger and coherent than the starting xi Kenny inherited. It's a combination of good coaching/man management, good recruitment and those players returning, all building momentum, they'll be a force next year and I'm glad they'll likely be in Europe next year, the league needs a team like that helping to drive standards. It'll push the other coaches too.
Did you now ?
You also posted this early in his Pats time when his thread was scarcely active any longer ;
I remember sympathising with you as I read it for the level of psychological scarring Kenny must have left on you to feel the need to post it and equally not to consider it may age quite badly. Which it looks to be doing.
If I remember rightly my line of thought at the time was that, given how badly schooled he was by relatively average managers in international football, surely domestic league managers in Ireland will have taken note of how to outmanoeuvre his teams - surely they're at least capable of that? Hands up, it looks like I was wrong. Based on the evidence so far even that is beyond them.
Do you watch the league?
He's not the Ireland manager anymore, you can let it go. Maybe Kenny learned something from his time at international football too? He's failed many times in his career and every time so far, come back and done better again, people are capable of growth, that take on him and the other coaches is overly simplistic.
The Rovers news regards getting funding for the academy is huge, an opportunity to create more pathways for coaches as well as improving contact time for underage players, hopefully some more clubs will be capable of following suit, there's decent opportunities in Ireland now to get in to coaching, but it is still extremely limited compared to elsewhere.
Last edited by Acornvilla; 01/11/2024 at 10:54 AM.
What I like about Duff is he seems to have created a bit of a siege mentality and has the personality to be forceful if needed.
I imagine the players look up to him. His playing career also makes him well respected I imagine.
Would love to see how he gets on in England. He’s done a great job with Shels
As far as he's said himself, he's at Shels for the long haul, not particularly interested in international management, wants his kids to grow up here, he'll honestly do far more good for Irish football where he is in any case, he's been a wonderful addition, I wish more of our stars followed his example.
Duff reminds me of a typical ra-ra GAA manager - but the guy has little tactical nous. I get the impression he is not the smartest guy to ever play the game. I could see him getting badly exposed if he was given a bigger job. Kenny's ceiling is LOI and I suspect that Duff's is the same.
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