Duffy turns down Bohs job.

**Jerry The Saint** · 05/10/2006, 9:53 AM

Originally Posted by Dodge

Actually talked to Nutsy about why he didn't go to Bohs. He said Bohs board wouldn't back him with transfer fees. Apparently his wages (and the wages made available for players) wasn't an issue but Bohs (rightly IMO) insisted on not paying transfer fees

Loyalty to his current employers and not wanting to walk out on Shels during the title run-in clearly wasn't an issue either.

And here was me thinking he didn't want to disappoint the fans who love him so much...

**BohsFans** · 05/10/2006, 12:44 PM

Originally Posted by BohsBohsBohs

Bohs may have made a mistake in getting rid of Stephen Kenny,

Hardly true.

**LukeO** · 05/10/2006, 5:46 PM

Originally Posted by BohsFans

Hardly true.

Exactly what I was thinking.

I'm sick of this nonsense that we were wrong to get rid of Kenny.

- We had the biggest budget in the league (or if wasn't the biggest, the difference between ours and Shels was marginal).

- Kenny bottled the title in 2003. Having beaten Shelbourne 3-1 and gone on to be six points clear (I think it was six, but I'm open to correction), poor defeats in November; 1-0 to Shelbourne (50/50 game, fair enough), 1-0 to Derry and 2-0 to Drogheda who were both poor sides back then, finishing ninth and eight respectively in a ten-team league.
Coupled with disappointing draws with Rovers (finished 7th) and UCD (finished bottom), we took only 4 points from 15 in the title run-in at the end of the season and only 2 points from 12 against the bottom four teams at the end of the season.

- Ignored players' pleas to play five in midfield against Rosenborg in the first leg with the net result being that we we were slaughtered in midfield an extremely lucky not to be beaten more than 1-0 before going on to lose the second leg 4-0.

- Replaced Gary O'Neill who has since gone on to prove himself to be one of the best strikers in the league with the stocking of **** that is Robbie Doyle.

- God rid of Derek Coughlan, one of our star performers from the league win in 02/03, while somehow believing Paul McNally was good enough to pick up a wage of €1000+ per week for doing sweet f.a.

2004

- We were ten points behind Shelbourne at the time of Kenny's dismissal, having lost twice to the mighty Dublin City and were incapable of winning games we dominated resulting in nine league draws by the time Kenny got the chop in August 04.

- Kenny won only three out of 17 of his last home games at Bohs.

- We lost 3-1 in the UEFA Cup to a team that Pete Mahon managed to beat comprehensively 3-0 only a few years previously. (The first time we had been knocked out at the first hurdle since 1997). We had drawn the first leg 0-0 with Ken Oman winning motm, yet Kenny replaced him with the injured and well out of form Colin Hawkins for the return leg. As far as I can remember Hawkins was directly responsible for two, if not three of the goals we conceded.

- He had lost the respect of many senior players who were bitching about him behind his back.

- Got paranoid and prevented players from speaking to the media and accused people of having an agenda against him.

- Prevented players from renegotiating contracts with Bohs until he was given an extension to his own, with the net effect being that nine players including Glen Crowe and Simon Webb were allowed leave the club at the end of the season.

- Replaced one useless, arsehole assistant (Liam O'Brien) with another (Gary Howlett).

__________________________________________________ _______

I could go on, but you get the drift. I'm glad Kenny's doing so well at Derry as he's someone I admire both as a person and a manager and was sad that his spell at Bohs had to end the way it did. But the reality is that it HAD to end as things were simply going from bad to worse and in reality his tenure probably should have ended earlier, after our second defeat to Dublin City so that another manager could have come in and steadied the ship for the UEFA Cup games.

I think he has learnt from his time at Bohs and his short break from the game did him good as he had time to look back objectively at mistakes and errors of judgement he made with us and he's unlikely to make the same mistakes again at Derry. He's doing a great job with Derry in what is a much harder league to do well in than the league was when he was in charge at Bohs as there are now at least five clubs (Drogheda, Shels, Bohs, Cork and Derry) with budgets of way over €1m p/a while when he was at Bohs, there was only ourselves and Shels with such budgets

Bohs were not mistaken in sacking Kenny, they just made a massive blunder in who they appointed as his successor.