Originally Posted by
BOOMSHAKALAKA
Kenny had basically the same squad as McCarthy and then a breakthrough of young players to use. Like when McCarthy brought in Connolly, Kenny had the huge list of breakthroughs to bring into the squad and team. So he started with a strong squad that came very close to qualification for the euros automatically and then had the long list of players I mentioned there for him to add to it. Original squad + some of the best emerging talent for a long time = A better squad than McCarthy's. It's not complicated.
It's changed according to Kenny, he thinks we shouldn't be thinking about coming ahead of teams like Portugal and Serbia anyway. His thoughts have been repeated by Kenny supporters. Even some questioned why we should be expecting to beat Luxembourg!
Your next paragraph is laughable. We're not being fair to poor Stephen Kenny, how dare anyone expect us to be competitive. Other countries would laugh at us even thinking that.
Why do you need the full quote? Isn't that enough? Kenny is trying to convince us that it's not his fault, it's anyone who has the audacity to think we could even think of coming ahead of Serbia and Portugal who's the problem. And the full quote makes it worse, look at the state of this, he's not living in reality:
"If you take the four matches in this campaign. In the games against Serbia and Portugal away, they are probably two of the best performances in the last decade away from home in the last decade, without question.
Against Luxembourg at home we didn't play well at all. It was a poor performance, but we still didn't deserve to lose the game based on the chances. The other night we dominated and should have won well.
Don't forget, the spine of this team was ripped out. Darren Randolph was injured for a good period of time, Richard Keogh finished, Glenn Whelan is at the latter end of his career and was a brilliant player, David McGoldrick retired. The whole spine was taken out of the team.
We have take the best young players we have seen for a long, long time and blooded a lot of players. You're not always going to get a level of consistency with that.
Our performances in this campaign, bar the Luxembourg game which we were very disappointed with, have been good overall.
With Serbia and Portugal in this group and the spine having been ripped out of the team, and we haven't qualified for the World Cup since 2002, did anyone think that we were favourites to qualify or should qualify?
We have a plan in place. I have taken the decision, right or wrong, that we would build this squad to be a really competitive competitive team to qualify for Germany 2024.
We didn't not try and win those games, we came very close against Serbia and Portugal away from home, scored the first goal and played brilliant football in both games. I have taken that decision...
I think there is real progress overall to be honest. That's the way I see it, that's the way my staff see it, and all the coaches see it.
There are a lot of people that don't see it. They say 'that's not your job to develop the game, your job is to win the next match'. That kind of nearsightedness doesn't create anything.
You might beat teams you should beat, but you can never beat the teams that you stride to beat. You're trying to build something that can be tangible over a period of time and that can be successful.
That's the way I see it."
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