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!
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.Originally Posted by zero
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...
Keane O'Shea Given Best Smallbone
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.
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.
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?
Last edited by osarusan; 01/04/2021 at 7:27 AM.
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.
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