Next Senior Men's Team Manager - Runners and Riders

[seanfhear]

Kerr was miles better than Kenny is my scientific analysis.

[pineapple stu]

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

The 0-0 draw in Paris was a super result and performance even then. But the habit of sitting back on leads cost us too often, and technically his time in charge saw us drop from first seeds (2004) to fourth seeds (2008).

"Somewhere in the middle" is probably the best way of putting it alright.

[TonyD]

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.

I agree with a lot of what you say here, but there are a few things I’d pull you up on. Firstly, in relation to Eoin Hand. I don’t think he had a weaker team than Giles, in fact I think it was a bit stronger. Brady, Stapleton and O’Leary were more experienced, Mark Lawrenson emerged (though Giles originally capped him as an 18 year old). Ronnie Whelan also came through, and Michael Robinson emerged aa a partner for Stapleton. He also had other solid pros like Grealish, Langan etc. Hand produced one of the finest ever qualifying campaigns in the WC for 1982. We beat Holland and France at home, and drew with Belgium, got a draw in Holland and lost narrowly (with the help of some “questionable” refereeing decisions in Paris and Brussels. Desperately unlucky not to qualify, failing on goal difference. For some reason the following two campaigns never went as well for Eoin Hand. We played decent football under Hand.

On Stephen Keny There is no doubt that he failed. However, I think it’s grossly unfair to say “he has never demonstrated over his entire career an ability to get the best from his teams.” That’s demonstrably untrue, as evidenced by his trophy collection. You also state that he is “a run of the mill LOI manager who fell into good situations on more than one occasion.” Again, his record says otherwise. Dundalk were nowhere near winning titles before he took on the job, he got them to runners up in his first season and won the title in his second. Ok, you can say that he wasn’t able for the step up to the Ireland job, but he was clearly more than just a “run of the mill” LOI manager. There is also the argument that with the benefit of previous squads his way may have had more success. We’ll never know. There was always going to be a period of some pain while young, inexperienced players were being blooded. When assessing managers, the strength of the playing pool they have simply can’t be ignored.

[Razors left peg]

Birmingham sacking Rooney could be bad for those of us that want Carsley. He was born there, played for the club and they have plenty of money to throw at him. I never bought the links with Stoke or others, but this one would concern me.

[pineapple stu]

On Stephen Keny There is no doubt that he failed. However, I think it’s grossly unfair to say “he has never demonstrated over his entire career an ability to get the best from his teams.” That’s demonstrably untrue, as evidenced by his trophy collection. You also state that he is “a run of the mill LOI manager who fell into good situations on more than one occasion.”

Yeah, that's a bizarre argument to make. He took Longford from the First Division to Europe, took over Bohs who had just won the double (but he'd earned that promotion), took over Derry and Dundalk when they had barely avoided relegation and turned Derry into title contenders and Dundalk into a genuinely trailblazing LoI team. The Rovers move didn't work out for whatever reason, but he clearly got the best from several teams and transformed underachieving teams more than once.

[JR89]

Yeah given his connection with Birmingham, the City and club it might tempt him if he's looking at club management. Though how quick they ditched Eustace who had them 5th for Rooney is a massive red flag towards the new owners.

[ontheotherhand]

I'm convinced there's a town somewhere in Ireland where about 4-5 foot.ie posters live amongst these devout Kennyites we keep hearing about.

[Eirambler]

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

Our strengths are that we have the players - if properly organised - to be solid defensively, we have genuine options with pace - to an extent we have possibly never had before - in wide positions and in attack and we have one of the most highly rated young centre forwards in world football.

You didn't ask what our weaknesses are, but we probably all know anyway. We're desperately lacking in midfield quality and depth and we have a real problem position also at left back. We also have limited technical ability relative to many European nations, as has always been the way.

Probably not the setup for a manager who is insistent on playing the ball on the ground methodically through midfield, as we have seen. Might suit someone who prefers their teams to sit deep and play direct on the counter attack though...

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.

I suppose the key difference between Touhy/Giles and Charlton though was that Charlton achieved tangible success, Touhy and Giles didn't. The idea that we could have been more successful in the 80s and early 90s with a different approach is highly, highly questionable. We've never managed it any other time so there's little to suggest that we would have done it then. In fact it's highly likely that our success came about precisely because we played the way we did.

Sure, if you take the Egypt game in isolation and ignore everything else, we may well have won that game as a standalone match playing a more expansive style. But you can't just turn it on and off like a tap, had we played that way we would probably have lost the other two games and finished third in the group and either been eliminated at that point or by West Germany in a last 16 game if we had scraped through. That's if we even qualified for the tournament to begin with. I certainly doubt we'd have qualified for USA 94 for example, had we adopted an expansive approach, and probably not for Euro 88 either. It's why I strongly believe that Dunphy was wrong then in the same way that so many were wrong about Kenny in recent years.

[SkStu]

I'm convinced there's a town somewhere in Ireland where about 4-5 foot.ie posters live amongst these devout Kennyites we keep hearing about.

It’s probably Kilkenny. On the one hand, you have the Kennyites worshipping at the Church of Kenny whereas on the other hand, OTOH, the rest simply thought it was the best place to kill Kenny.

[Crosby87]

Wayne Rooney to managed Ireland!!!

[backstothewall]

This is how I'd rank the Irish managers during my lifetime

1. Charlton
2. McCarthy
3. O'Neill
4. Trapattoni
5. Kerr
6. Kenny
7. Staunton

I get that the ones who came later had inferior resources, but they also had an easier qualification process with the expansion of the World Cup and particularly the Euros over time.

[Eirambler]

I'd largely agree with that. Not much between Trap and O'Neill or between Kenny and Staunton. Notable again though that the managers who played more open football rank below those that went for a more pragmatic approach.

[SkStu]

I wouldn’t change much in that list either.

MickMack1.0 played a very decent and enjoyable brand of football. Mixed the approach depending on the opposition, used the midfield two as a rule - lots of pace and trickery from the full backs and wingers. Took a natural yet progressive step forward from the one dimensional Charlton era. He had the players for it but so too did Charlton. He will always get a lot of credit from me for what he did first time round. If you look beyond just results (I’m not saying anyone should) and included an “enjoyability” criterion, there’s a very decent argument to be made that Mick would be at the top of the list. Version 2.0 probably rules that andjustment to the rankings out though. Using the same totally subjective criteria, I’d probably drop Trap below Kerr and Kenny (I know it’s a bit ridiculous but I don’t care ) and it would also move O’Neill a little closer to Charlton in second spot.

I can’t stand Trap and what he brought to the squad mentality, to our game with good players and to the confidence of a nation. He ignored quality players that could and should have allowed us to move beyond the TBOF approach. I think we underachieved overall under him. He brought us to a tournament (courtesy of a very fortunate playoff draw - admittedly he was unlucky to have drawn France the WC10 playoff), sure, but it was embarrassing and started the schism that exists between some quarters of the media and support.

I actually enjoyed O’Neill for the most part. The last year or so (Nations League??) was turgid stuff but early on he found a way to mix the direct that brought the best out of Walters and Long with the class of Wessi and got a good tune out of players like McGeady, Hendrick, Brady more often than not. Germany home and Wales and Austria away were absolutely great moments.

Anyway… objectively the list is spot on but once you bring other factors into it, maybe it’s not quite as straightforward! My two cents.

[Crosby87]

I think all time, Val Harris is #1.

[tetsujin1979]

I can’t stand Trap and what he brought to the squad mentality, to our game with good players and to the confidence of a nation. He ignored quality players that could and should have allowed us to move beyond the TBOF approach. I think we underachieved overall under him. He brought us to a tournament (courtesy of a very fortunate playoff draw - admittedly he was unlucky to have drawn France the WC10 playoff), sure, but it was embarrassing and started the schism that exists between some quarters of the media and support.

The framing of that play off draw as lucky always bothered me - if you think the one in four chance we had of drawing Estonia was lucky, then fair enough, but it ignores the efforts of the team over the previous two years to go from unseeded in the draw for the 2010 World Cup play off, to being seeded in the 2012 draw. If it was luck, it was luck that the team, and management, made for themselves.

[SkStu]

The framing of that play off draw as lucky always bothered me - if you think the one in four chance we had of drawing Estonia was lucky, then fair enough, but it ignores the efforts of the team over the previous two years to go from unseeded in the draw for the 2010 World Cup play off, to being seeded in the 2012 draw. If it was luck, it was luck that the team, and management, made for themselves.

Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. I agree the team did well to put themselves in the position to get that lucky. Overall the playoffs were a very minor side-point I was making in the grand scheme of things, which was really just to point out how much I detest Trap.

[Razors left peg]

Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. I agree the team did well to put themselves in the position to get that lucky. Overall the playoffs were a very minor side-point I was making in the grand scheme of things, which was really just to point out how much I detest Trap.

I was over the moon when Trap and O'Neill were both appointed, but like you Stu I hated both by the end. I hated that they instilled the idea that Irish players can't play football and that both gave the impression that little old us were lucky they gave us their time.

I enjoyed O'Neill for longer, the Euros were great but it went sour fairly quickly afterwards. I didn't enjoy the Euros under Trap. The pi$$ed up fans singing while we were getting a hammering from Spain was a lowlight for me and proved that most "football fans" in the country really couldn't care less about us trying to improve, and that's why I loved Kenny's ideas so much.

The worst player in our squad was the best player in his youth team or school team when he was young. They can all play football to get to the professional ranks, so I absolutely don't agree that we can't play. I do think we are in an extended transition period in the standard of our players, but no one will convince me that as a nation we shouldn't aspire to play decent football and have success. We've done it in the past and will again in the future. Kenny just wasn't capable of getting the most out of a young squad and ultimately he proved he wasn't up to the job, but that doesn't mean his aims were wrong.

[Stuttgart88]

Birmingham want to talk to Carsley according to Sky Sports News. John Eustace too.

[pineapple stu]

The framing of that play off draw as lucky always bothered me - if you think the one in four chance we had of drawing Estonia was lucky, then fair enough, but it ignores the efforts of the team over the previous two years to go from unseeded in the draw for the 2010 World Cup play off, to being seeded in the 2012 draw. If it was luck, it was luck that the team, and management, made for themselves.

You could also argue the luck was that a team as well as Estonia were in the pot to begin with

Normally you'd have a 0/4 chance of a draw like that

[Stuttgart88]

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.



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.

That probably includes me then, though I'd contend that the whole argument is a bit of a straw man. In my opinion, we didn't do badly under Kenny because we were not pragmatic or because we were only trying to play expansive football. We did badly because in the end it was proven he wasn't a great coach, manifested by several weaknesses such as in-game reaction, bad substitutions, conceding the same goal over and over again, and just overall patternless play. Portugal away was as pragmatic as you could get, and it nearly yielded a famous result. France at home too.

I don't think anyone is so stupid as to think we must play expansive football as an end in itself. Pragmatic is fine, and starting with a foundational principle of being hard to beat is also fine (under Kenny we were easy to beat) but the bottom line still has to be that good players have to do good things to win games.

Edit: I just read your subsequent post. I agree that the new manager will have pace and an emerging talent upfront. That should be at the core of any manager's strategy.