Canham must have been delighted when he met Hallgrimsson. Happy to move to Ireland, didn't want a huge salary, comfortable with the FAI's own cheap assistants being foisted on him and doesn't even need expenses covered to travel to games. Willing to take a short contract too so no need to worry about paying him off if it's a disaster.Originally Posted by WexCar.
It is all going to fall apart very quickly (it kinda already has) unless Hallgrimsson gets a proper grip on the reins.
The anaesthetic is starting to wear off a bit earlier than expected, for sure.
Tom Cannon playing for Stoke today, Moran on the bench. Is that the sort of game we want the manager going to? (Or Brighton v Ipswich?)
Maybe he had a dentist appointment
A series of negative articles and headlines surrounding the new manager in the Sundays, I note.
The knives are already out for Hallgrimsson after just one international window where, by his own admission, he was taking more of a watching brief, with O'Shea/McCarthy largely responsible for squad/team selection and tactics.
Now, perhaps this (presumably association-sanctioned) approach can be said to be, to an extent, his making a rod for his own back. But compare this treatment with the more than four years of apologism and endless excuses from a largely fawning press during the constant failure of the Kenny/O'Shea era.
It's obvious most wanted and still desire O'Shea to be the main man. Even during his first press conference I was struck by the faint but unmistakable scepticism and animosity of the press corp.
Last edited by Trequartista20; 15/09/2024 at 9:58 AM.
I'm not sure that tracks. O'Shea's poor record in the manager's job is pseudo-extended by his inflated role in the last window, and it isn't looking any better for it. I'd have thought his supporters would be quietly forgetting they ever backed him. I do think there's hostility, but it's to a highly paid manager taking so long to do the basic prep you'd expect most managers to get their heads around in a fortnight, not to an interloper taking a job away from the old boys network.
You can't spell failure without FAI
O'Shea is just as culpable for the poor performances - if not more so. If anyone in the FAI thinks O'Shea is the answer they should be sacked on the spot
Each individuals perception is funny. Trying to be as objective as I can, this is how I read it overall.
HH's appointment has been met with much skepticism, not because of who he is or his record, but because of how the FAI have communicated it. The FAI trying to say HH has been the main target for many months. Having the announcement immediately after the abuse allegations emerged was terrible optics. I also think the Greenwood question needed to be asked. There's also questions about issues of abuse within Icelandic football, who knew what and when, we don't need to get in to the rights and wrongs of all of that again, but all I am saying is, none of that makes the appointment an easy one for everyone to immediately celebrate.
Now I can see a world where they have been trying to get him for an extended period, but he said he would finish out his time at Jamaica first, so they also looked at other options and allowed JOSH to audition for the role with the 4 friendlies. Both things can be true at the same time, although I totally understand why many would not believe it. The issue with him being open about his lack of knowledge and that he would be leaning heavily on the previous coaching staff, that showed itself unlikely to be ready to lead the team themselves in those 4 friendlies has lead many to be very suspicious of what the FAI had been saying re the timeline of his approach and appointment, while there are also questions about the ability of the staff he's decided to go with (been given).
Throw all of that in to the issue itself of him having absolutely no lead in time to get to know players, hold camps, and two uninspiring defeats, I can see why the mood is poor. Especially given everything since the fall of the Champaign football era, and the general mood of the nation in terms of the FAI and what has been happening. I personally think HH underestimated the job ahead, as well as the level of media scrutiny he would be under, has probably been too honest, and tried to be too positive about the FAI, to please his employers, not realizing that might actually go down badly outside of the organization at large. Now people are looking for any excuse for a story and to keep the circus going.
I don't think there's a big issue with him necessarily leaning heavily on previous coaches, I do have my doubts about the staff's capability to do the job, but I'm willing to give them time to learn and improve, much like I think the players still need. We have so many potentially great footballers, but almost none of them are were I thought they would be now, 5 years ago. I think a win v Finland, with HH spaking with more authority, and any sort of improved performance in Greece will change the mood around the place.
Re Kenny's treatment, He did very well with the u21's the first time in decades that team had any relevance. I think people and media were largely optimistic, they wanted it to work after years of turgid regressive football, with a squad better than the one we have now. I am old enough to remember very soon it became an immediate culture war, with a lot of people finding any excuse to attack him, we didn't score a goal until Andorra and the vibes were not good, followed by a decent draw away in Hungary, there was some rest bite. There was plenty of negativity already in that first Nations League campaign, which was hilariously I think still went better than the one under Martin O' Neill. While others wanted to be blindly optimistic that he alone could be the silver bullet to solve decades of disfunction. We had a brief spell where things felt positive while Anthony Barry was around, but even then his detractors just heaped praise on Barry. It's all down to the media you consume and the people you speak to how you view the general discourse I suppose.
Right now I think it's pretty understandable people are angry and impatient, but I also thing HH deserves more time and some benefit of the doubt.
Some degree of patience is needed. Alarm bells were ringing for me from early on in Kenny's time. But there were certain mitigating factors to be taken into account and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt up to a point.
Similarly, doubts are starting to emerge with me in regards to HH, particularly regarding O'Shea's role. Again, I think it's fair to afford him a reasonable amount of time to turn things round.
My point was more about the disparity in reception and treatment from the press regarding the two.
Well said, Treq. Balanced and fair over two posts.
To be clear when I was talking about the press as well as the wider public, I think it's right for the press to be pretty skeptical right now given everything I mentioned. I definitely think there's too much negative emphasis right now, and that is sadly a reflection of the media landscape at large, but the org as a whole has not done enough to insulate their new hire. I think HH's issue is he has no friends to bat for him, something Kenny had 30 years to build, but even then right from the off he had a lot of skeptics who weren't afraid to say it.
5 years or so later, people are even angrier and more skeptical than the were before and that's not just a football problem, but the media will run with it.
Last edited by Acornvilla; 15/09/2024 at 2:23 PM.
Having the right friends in the right places seems to be everything in Irish football, and failing that having some friends is better than having none.
It seems clear to me as well that HH is being given no leeway at all by the press here. I don't agree that it's association sanctioned though, quite the opposite in fact. But I think there are two strong groups in play here. (Incidentally I don't want this post to read like some kind of culture wars effort, but at the same time given what I'm seeing and reading it's hard to see how that can be avoided.)
First there's the domestic football group. Both journalists and fans. Let's face it a lot are still smarting over what happened to SK. They batted for him for years in the press and on social media, and he delivered nothing back for them in return. The only excuse for it now is if it was, in fact, an impossible job. If Hallgrimsson fails they can spin it that way. Dan McD would be one of the higher profile in this category in my view - interesting to read what he's publishing now about Hallgrimsson compared to what he wrote for years about Kenny. It's night and day. They'll be happy enough to see Hallgrimsson fail and fail quickly.
The other group is the ex-pros. The ones that spent weeks if not months filling column inches and TV spots with cries of "just give it to Sheasy", as soon as it was clear that another ex-pro, Carsley, was a no go. They won't be happy seeing "Sheasy" having to go in a number 2 to some lad from Iceland they've never heard of or played with. They'll be happy enough to see Hallgrimsson fail and fail quickly too.
Both groups are loud voices in the Irish media. Hallgrimsson doesn't have either on side. The only group he has on side are the FAI, who are unreliable, out of favour with the media and public, and in a huge financial mess. They'll keep him in a job short term, but longer term they'll happily cut him adrift if they need to in order to protect themselves.
So basically he has walked into a massive minefield here. Everything he says and does will be spun against him, his lack of knowledge and experience of English football in particular will be thrown at him by the ex-pros whenever there's an opportunity. And he won't have the support from the stands that kept Kenny in situ for as long as they did. What he needs and deserves is space to get on with the job - at least until the end of the World Cup campaign. But there's no guarantee he'll get that. If things keep going as they are he might just walk away a lot sooner than that.
I don't think anyone is calling for HH to be sacked. And any group that wants the manager/team to fail to score some petty point isn't a fan, afaic.
It's OK to be unimpressed though, or to have misgivings. He's not doing this out of the goodness of his heart either; he's getting well paid for it and the FAI's PR team need to get it out there that HH is doing ALL he can. Some photos of him walking alone along the beach at Sandymount might be good; or leaning against a whiteboard with diff team formations + mathematical symbols; or sleeping on a park bench in Colchester to be at an early kick off.. that type of thing
I largely agree with that. I do think the Ex pro/UK centric media has a far larger share and sway over discourse thou.
As someone who lives within the LOI bubble, I'd listen to most LOI/Irish football podcasts because of the nature of the work I do, I have a lot of background noise to fill, and I frankly need to listen to less football discourse if anything
I would read less of the papers, so can't comment on the war's waged there. I can tell you there was not universal support of Kenny from LOI circles for a very long time, I also think it would occupy a much smaller share of the football media. I do think Dan Mc is one of our better football journalists, and generally try's to steer away from bombast and grand pronouncements, he's obviously from near Dundalk and would know Kenny as well as anyone in the media, so totally understandable he would go to bat for him, but equally I'm not sure he exactly holds huge sway over public opinion.
Someone like Richie Sadlier was interesting, because of the nature of his personality and profession, he has grown in to a very good talker on complicated issues trying to be open minded on topics, and he would also have been pro Kenny but from a mostly non LOI background, he held out for a long time but eventually became a very public critic. Brian Kerr was a very interesting watch, and it felt like some of his criticism of Kenny came hard and fast, in reaction possibly to his own overly harsh treatement. I love Brian Kerr in general but lord I hate how negative he could be on Virgin.
More LOI friendly media has absolutely exploded in size over the past number of years due to podcasts/social media and getting some degree of share on radio, but I think the fans in the stands were far more instrumental in keeping Kenny in the job than anything positive media spin was doing tbqh. I tried to listen to stuff from all sides, and it was very much more negative than positive from the off imo.
Having said that, I think an awful lot of opinion wasn't as deeply entrenched as just pro/anti, a lot of people just wanted the team to start trying to ****house and win 1-0 again. There were some very ocal people within the LOI who wanted him gone for quite a while but just didn't want to say it as forcefully as say someone like Didi Hamann
I think HH is having a much harder time of it right now in comparison to Kenny's beginning and he's definitely getting it from all sides, but I don't think there's any agenda from LOI circles to undermine him, I think that's more a result of LOI V FAI tensions. I think there's an excellent opportunity there for someone savvy within the media to try and get on HH's side, be his messenger as it where.
He is not doing his job is he? He’s letting others do it – giving his brief to O’Shea who was overlooked for the position (because he wasn’t considered good enough to do the job?). And he intends to keep doing this. He is justifying this by saying he does not yet know the character/ personality of the players. That perhaps can be understandable but not his proposed rectifying solution of Wyscout! If he considered Wyscout sufficient to know the character/ personality of the players, why didn’t he make (more) use of that resource prior to the England/ Greece games instead of taking a back seat. He was after all in the job two months at that stage, couldn’t we expect him to be more up to speed on the players, the player pool is small by any measure. We are now also told that he hasn’t moved to Ireland which means he is somewhere in the world having a cup of tea and looking at a screen, maybe. If he is not in lreland, he is not fulfilling the role which I was under the impression was a more hands-on collaboration with others with a focus on the senior team but also casting a wider brief to include the underage teams/ football structures. It certainly wasn't sold by Canham as a remote position. He has dug his own hole, and he keeps on digging it. Now personally I think it is still too early to make a judgement call on HH either way but we are already two defeats into his tenure and it doesn’t feel like he is doing everything necessary to address this. Two away games coming – if we lose both we are odds on for relegation. In that scenario, his longer term future is in question.
Early days.
Shortening days.
Hopefully Heimer won't be back home before Christmas !
Away in Santa's homeland next up. You're tempting his fate with the Christmas reference.
I really don’t understand him not going to watch players. And also to talk to them after games
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