Next Senior Men's Team Manager - Runners and Riders

[nigel-harps1954]

Which faction? LOI fans?

There's no point engaging with this nonsense.

[Eirambler]

Which faction? LOI fans?

Not really, no. I don't think you can easily generalise it to supporters of a particular club team or league. Some are probably League of Ireland fans, others probably not. But there's definitely a group out there, as is touched on in the article. They range from committed match attendees to barstool bores. But they tend to have similar views, they thought Kenny was going to be the answer to all our problems, that previous managers were holding us back by not playing a more expansive style, that we have consistently had great players who have only been held back by overly conservative managers, and the older ones among them probably agreed with Dunphy's nonsense during Italia 90. Basically just wrong about everything, but don't like it being pointed out to them.

[Razors left peg]

Not really, no. I don't think you can easily generalise it to supporters of a particular club team or league. Some are probably League of Ireland fans, others probably not. But there's definitely a group out there, as is touched on in the article. They range from committed match attendees to barstool bores. But they tend to have similar views, they thought Kenny was going to be the answer to all our problems, that previous managers were holding us back by not playing a more expansive style, that we have consistently had great players who have only been held back by overly conservative managers, and the older ones among them probably agreed with Dunphy's nonsense during Italia 90. Basically just wrong about everything, but don't like it being pointed out to them.

Nigel is right about about the best do is to ignore this drivel but it's actually one of the stupidest posts I've seen in quite awhile.

Firstly, previous managers before Kenny had some success that we all got behind. When we qualified for tournament under Trap we traveled in our numbers but we performed poorly in the tournament. We then were rightly annoyed at this rigidity and refusal to pick the likes of Wes and Andy Reid who were excellent footballers. It all got stale and when the time came we were right to move on.

Similarly under O'Neill, we loved him initially. The Euros in France were fantastic. We had young players in Brady and Hendrick and we were playing decent stuff, but again it got stale after. We were having games where we had 20% possession and couldn't score goals. By the end he was making himself extreme unlikable. Wasn't involved all week with players and would turn up an hour before games to give team talk. The results were poor, the football crap and there was a general malise that was leading to half empty stadiums at home games.

Kenny came in and immediately tried to bring a bit of life back to us. He has done well with an u21 team that played exciting football and he brought a lot of these players with him. Players were replaced that had to be replaced as they had been mediocre for years. Not one person here complained when the likes of Hourihane and Hendrick were eventually moved on. The problem we had is the younger players weren't ready necessarily to come in and play as big a role as they had to. It then became clear that Kenny wasn't capable of implementing the ideas he has as time went on he lost his bottle and we had to move on. Hopefully the new man will now have a platform to begin with that Kenny didn't with experienced young players and and an emerging star striker.

Your above post saying a bunch of people are wrong but you're the guy who' knows better than anyone might still be stupidest post of the year come Dec 31st

[Eirambler]

Nigel is right about about the best do is to ignore this drivel but it's actually one of the stupidest posts I've seen in quite awhile.

Firstly, previous managers before Kenny had some success that we all got behind. When we qualified for tournament under Trap we traveled in our numbers but we performed poorly in the tournament. We then were rightly annoyed at this rigidity and refusal to pick the likes of Wes and Andy Reid who were excellent footballers. It all got stale and when the time came we were right to move on.

Similarly under O'Neill, we loved him initially. The Euros in France were fantastic. We had young players in Brady and Hendrick and we were playing decent stuff, but again it got stale after. We were having games where we had 20% possession and couldn't score goals. By the end he was making himself extreme unlikable. Wasn't involved all week with players and would turn up an hour before games to give team talk. The results were poor, the football crap and there was a general malise that was leading to half empty stadiums at home games.

Kenny came in and immediately tried to bring a bit of life back to us. He has done well with an u21 team that played exciting football and he brought a lot of these players with him. Players were replaced that had to be replaced as they had been mediocre for years. Not one person here complained when the likes of Hourihane and Hendrick were eventually moved on. The problem we had is the younger players weren't ready necessarily to come in and play as big a role as they had to. It then became clear that Kenny wasn't capable of implementing the ideas he has as time went on he lost his bottle and we had to move on. Hopefully the new man will now have a platform to begin with that Kenny didn't with experienced young players and and an emerging star striker.

Your above post saying a bunch of people are wrong but you're the guy who' knows better than anyone might still be stupidest post of the year come Dec 31st

but don't like it being pointed out to them.

Indeed.

[Razors left peg]

Indeed what, that I pointed out your post for the shyte talk it is?

[Eirambler]

Don't kid yourself, you didn't do anything of the sort. However, you were obviously triggered by my earlier post, suggesting that you are in fact exactly the kind of person I was originally describing.

[Razors left peg]

No dude just calling out idiocy when I see it

[tetsujin1979]

I have zero interest in letting this go on. Eirambler, your post, intentionally or not, was looking to provoke anyone who supported Kenny since before he took over as senior manager.

Have always thought of Conor Neville as one of the more underrated Irish sports writers. Overall a very good article, the only small issue I'd have is with him saying Kenny never resorted to bemoaning the quality of players he was picking from - he absolutely did so that, having initially oversold them to a fairly ridiculous extent.

My wish for 2024 is that we get a manager who is more uniting of the support, whoever the new man is. Kenny was always going to play to a certain very vocal faction, one that I think are basically wrong in almost everything they think they know about football. Now that that viewpoint has been so publicly found out as pointed out in that article, we need someone who can reunite the support and be pragmatic to get the best out of the team, but at the same time without resorting to complete neanderthal tactics of times past.

He didn't "play to a certain vocal faction", he set the team up to play how he wanted them to play, and either he couldn't get his ideas across, or the players couldn't implement them and he couldn't adapt to their skill levels. Across his reign, he only capped one LOI player, Jack Byrne, and even then he only played a total of 50 minutes in the 41 minutes Kenny was in charge.
Very few, if any, fans are "wrong in almost everything they think they know about football". Most fans know what they're talking about most of the time.
The support is pretty united at the moment, the manager had very little support at the end of his reign. Nobody has said they want to go back to the tactics employed by O'Neill or Trapattoni.

Finally, it's not a good article from Neville - there's nothing really wrong with it, but there's nothing outstanding about it either. It's about the same level as any other number of end of year/end of reign reviews I've read over the last three weeks.

[pineapple stu]

I kind of thought the factional Kenny stuff would have died a death when Kenny left tbh. I never did find out who was supposed to be in the different groups, but I think the idea Kenny "play[ed] to a certain very vocal faction, one that I think are basically wrong in almost everything they think they know about football." is groundless.

There was support for what he was trying to do, and ultimately he and/or the players weren't able to do it. I generally found the discussion here about him quite balanced once you ignored the posts which referenced Kenny-ites or (less often) the opposite

[Olé Olé]

I'm not sure what the faction was either. I think he may have appealed to people who like a bit of romanticism or those with a positive and optimistic outlook. That could include equally LOI and Premier League supporters, not to mind exclude the LOI supporters that were not enamoured by him strictly on the back of stints as their manager i.e. Rovers.

[Eirambler]

I stand by my post, which I believe to be entirely reasonable. Some seem to have taken it as singling out League of Ireland fans, which I have already clarified is not at all the case. It applies as much to some of those who sit in the pub on a Sunday afternoon with a Liverpool or Man United jersey on as it does to some who religiously attend domestic games on Friday nights. Similarly there are many among both groups that it doesn't apply to at all. That was never what the post was about.

But I have supported the Irish team for a long time, since the Charlton days (I was to young for the Eoin Hand era). And the most common refrain I have heard from Irish supporters during that time is that we were somehow being held back by the tactics being employed, that we would be so much better if we had a manager who believed in the players and allowed them to express their skills rather than restricting them to defensively oriented tactics. I head it during the Charlton, Kerr, Trap, MON and McCarthy eras. The two eras I didn't hear it under were the Staunton and Kenny ones.

Four of the first five qualified us for finals tournaments, three took us to the knockout stages of those tournaments. Stan and Steo were the two least successful managers we have had in 40+ years. They qualified us for nothing and didn't even get close. Kenny, who I would see as the ultimate litmus test for the "let the players play" theory, was our least successful permanent manager and has set records so bad that they are unlikely to ever be beaten. That's where the more expansive attacking football those supporters who apparently know what they're talking about craved got us - utter failure.

If there is one positive that could maybe have been taken from the last three years I would have hoped that it might have been that some lessons would have been learned. I'll include myself in that to some extent because even I had an initial degree of cautious optimism at the beginning of the Kenny era and was keen to see the theory tested to see if there was anything in it.

But it's time to get real. We're a nation of five million people where there is a never ending battle between four massively popular team sports for an extremely limited playing pool. We cannot realistically hope to take on more populous nations, or even ones of similar-ish populations where football is the dominant sport, play them on the front foot and hope to out football them to victory. Even if we pull it off once or twice, we just can't do it over the longer term, it's not a realistic aspiration. We can, however, be competitive and punch far above our weight by being more pragmatic and playing to our strengths, as we have done many times in the past with success. That might not be what you want to hear, you will know yourself reading this whether it is something you want to hear or not. But it's the truth.

I had hoped it would be a lesson that would now be learned - maybe the one positive legacy from the otherwise disastrous Stephen Kenny era. Sadly it appears that it won't be the case for many.

[Stuttgart88]

What are the strengths of the current crop of Irish players?

[LurcherLover]

The Kenny era was peculiar, to say the least. Fans ridiculed for backing the manager, talk of cults, others unable to acknowledge or accept what was happening in front of them or hear/read criticism. I honestly think all the covid, extremist, left/right, social media nonsense that happened when Kenny took over filtered into Irish fans perspective of what was happening with the national team, when all it just boils down to, was a manager trying to implement a methodology we hadn't witnessed before and in which he was incapable of implementing. Or, maybe this just exists on forums and SM? Going to any games, home or away, didn't reflect what I was seeing on various platforms. Hopefully this isn't the case for the next tenure and we can all just get along and support the team ? Happy New Year!

[Demesne Lad]

Who would even step in as caretaker for two games. All the coaching staff were let go and the U21s have a qualifier. Is Noel King still involved with the FAI.

A Mr Wayne Rooney is looking for a new job......

[Jolly Red Giant]

I stand by my post, which I believe to be entirely reasonable. Some seem to have taken it as singling out League of Ireland fans, which I have already clarified is not at all the case. It applies as much to some of those who sit in the pub on a Sunday afternoon with a Liverpool or Man United jersey on as it does to some who religiously attend domestic games on Friday nights. Similarly there are many among both groups that it doesn't apply to at all. That was never what the post was about.

But I have supported the Irish team for a long time, since the Charlton days (I was to young for the Eoin Hand era). And the most common refrain I have heard from Irish supporters during that time is that we were somehow being held back by the tactics being employed, that we would be so much better if we had a manager who believed in the players and allowed them to express their skills rather than restricting them to defensively oriented tactics. I head it during the Charlton, Kerr, Trap, MON and McCarthy eras. The two eras I didn't hear it under were the Staunton and Kenny ones.

Four of the first five qualified us for finals tournaments, three took us to the knockout stages of those tournaments. Stan and Steo were the two least successful managers we have had in 40+ years. They qualified us for nothing and didn't even get close. Kenny, who I would see as the ultimate litmus test for the "let the players play" theory, was our least successful permanent manager and has set records so bad that they are unlikely to ever be beaten. That's where the more expansive attacking football those supporters who apparently know what they're talking about craved got us - utter failure.

If there is one positive that could maybe have been taken from the last three years I would have hoped that it might have been that some lessons would have been learned. I'll include myself in that to some extent because even I had an initial degree of cautious optimism at the beginning of the Kenny era and was keen to see the theory tested to see if there was anything in it.

But it's time to get real. We're a nation of five million people where there is a never ending battle between four massively popular team sports for an extremely limited playing pool. We cannot realistically hope to take on more populous nations, or even ones of similar-ish populations where football is the dominant sport, play them on the front foot and hope to out football them to victory. Even if we pull it off once or twice, we just can't do it over the longer term, it's not a realistic aspiration. We can, however, be competitive and punch far above our weight by being more pragmatic and playing to our strengths, as we have done many times in the past with success. That might not be what you want to hear, you will know yourself reading this whether it is something you want to hear or not. But it's the truth.

I had hoped it would be a lesson that would now be learned - maybe the one positive legacy from the otherwise disastrous Stephen Kenny era. Sadly it appears that it won't be the case for many.

The reality is that twice over the past 50 odd years we have had a team capable of playing an expansive passing game - the 1970s team of Liam Touhy and Johnny Giles (with Giles, Brady, O'Leary, Stapleton, Daly, Heighway) and the Charlton team. Touhy and Giles tried to maximise the benefits of playing football while getting results - Charlton got results, but with the team playing in a very rigid way. I have suggested before that if any of Touhy, Giles or Bob Paisley were appointed instead of Charlton (and they were all in for the job) then the team would have had the same (if not more) success, but playing a passing game rather than the Charlton approach. That is what frustrated Dunphy so much after the 1990 Egypt game - a midfield with Houghton, Sheedy, Townsend and McGrath could have played through the Egyptian team with ease if Charlton had allowed them to - but the players had success playing the Charlton way and they weren't going to dare question the gaffer.

Hand tried to replicate what Giles did - but Giles was gone from midfield (a massive gap to fill) and he had a weaker team at his disposal. McCarthy for all his faults, tried to maximise what the team could produce and did it whatever way was necessary. And by the way - Brian Kerr's tenure is underrated - he got the job after McCarthy lost two home games in the qualifiers and ended up nearly getting the team into the play-offs - in the WC group he finished three points behind France who won the group. His record was P33 - W18 - D11 - L4 and in competitive fixtures - P 16 - W7 - D7 - L2.

Now - I am mentioning Kerr because he had a similar trajectory to Kenny - LOI manager - Ireland underage manager - but Kerr was tens times the coach that Kenny is - just look at the results - and while Kenny was a disaster with Dunfermline - Kerr proved that he was a good coach by what he did with the Faroe Islands (a country with the same population as Waterford where he beat Lithuania and Estonia, drew away to Luxembourg and at home to N.I. and had France and Italy sweating to 0-1 wins).

Kenny wanted to play a particular way with Ireland - but he has never demonstrated over his entire career an ability to get the best from his teams and more importantly, he never showed the tactical awareness to be able to adapt both on and off the field. He is a run of the mill LOI manager who happened to fall into good situations on more than one occasion - but could never fix things when they were broken. Kenny as Ireland manager was always going to be a disaster and that should have been obvious to everyone in the FAI. Now - if you wanted the Irish team to play with more possession and in a style like the top club teams - then the FAI needed to hire a coach capable of adapting things without losing all understanding of who they had available and what their job was - and that was never Kenny.

[Jolly Red Giant]

A Mr Wayne Rooney is looking for a new job......

Jaysus - if that is the option bring back Kenny

[JR89]

A Mr Wayne Rooney is looking for a new job......

They've sacked him? Delighted to see Birmingham fall to pieces after they fired Eustace cause he wasn't a big enough name for the American owners.

[tetsujin1979]

Kerr's time in charge was a massive underachievement. With the players he had, he should have managed to at least reach a play off. Instead, we finished outside the top three in a group for the first time in twenty years, couldn't win a competitive game against a team ranked inside the top eighty in the world, and only scored three goals in a game twice in his reign.

[LurcherLover]

Kerr's time in charge was a massive underachievement. With the players he had, he should have managed to at least reach a play off. Instead, we finished outside the top three in a group for the first time in twenty years, couldn't win a competitive game against a team ranked inside the top eighty in the world, and only scored three goals in a game twice in his reign.

This. Also, underachievement is an understatement. He failed miserably with that squad at his disposal and has been bitter about it since.

[2 Year Contract]

Kerr's time in charge was a massive underachievement. With the players he had, he should have managed to at least reach a play off. Instead, we finished outside the top three in a group for the first time in twenty years, couldn't win a competitive game against a team ranked inside the top eighty in the world, and only scored three goals in a game twice in his reign.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another is, he was 3 points off a playoff spot for the euros and 1 point off a playoff spot for the World Cup, finishing 3 points behind group winners (and tournament runners up) France. A win percentage higher than any Ireland manager that had more than a handful of games and also the lowest loss percentage of the same, losing just 4 of 33 games. You can spin Kerr's tenure either way you like, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of those 2 extremes. Could have been better for sure, but also maybe should’ve been given another campaign