Was Kerr a relative success?

[Kevin77]

I know hindsight is 20/20, but I am wondering if this question has been considered on here.

Think about it? 5-2 to Cyprus! Cyprus for Christ's sake.

When you look at the team's achievment's in the last World Cup Qualifiers (not great, I know - but they look a million miles from losing 5-2 to Cyprus - we actually beat them home and away). They drew in Paris to the eventual World Cup finalists (France), admittedly lost 1-0 at home - does this seem so bad compared to what might yet happen tonight? They drew twice with eventual World Cup quarter finalists Switzerland (they were boring in the world cup - but we'd take the quarter finals and I'd challenge anyone to say we have worse players on paper than the Swiss). The Israel results were arguably poor results (I'd argue we should have won both, especially the home leg), but it could also be argued we were fiercely unlucky.

Perhaps Kerr was an unlucky manager and had we hung on against Israel maybe that would have been us boring the World to tears against the Ukraine? Perhaps?

What I do know is that under Kerr we never lost 5-2 to feckin Cyprus. The lowpoint was the 2-0 in Basle and probably the Israel games. While we were killed by those results, we were never so utterly humiliated.

Are the players that much worse at his disposal? I'd argue no perhaps much of a muchness? He has lost Roy Keane and Cunningham who were becoming more and more ineffectual with age from the last campaign, but players like Richard Dunne, Stephen Reid, Kevin Doyle and Aiden McGeady have come along either fulfilled their potential or are approaching what we have hoped for.

I read an argument that while we are a team in transition, that is no excuse for losing to a side that equates to no more than a team equivelant to the best of the eircom league garnished with a couple of reasonable strikers that play Champions League football for Greek sides. Not just losing. Getting well and truly hammered.

So in hindsight, perhaps the sacking of Kerr was the worst to happen.

It reminds me of the situation at Newcastle when the fans were calling for Bobby Robson's head. Little did they know that once he was gone, things were going to get far worse under Graham Souness regime.

So what do you think? Did Kerr get more out of a mediocre group of players than we gave him credit for? Or is Staunton just really unlucky and this horrible result is a one off abberation (can we count the 0-4 friendly loss to the Dutch as further proof against him?)?

Anyone?

[paul_oshea]

NO!!!

and i only put in any exclamations in because a post has to have 5 chars min, a simple
No
would have been enough.

[galwayhoop]

he was. if your saying a relative success and that meaning relative to what we have now then most definately yes.

i have no axe to grind with stan but i have with the peoples who put hime there (we were promised a world class manager). here are the fact as i see them:

1. we were within a win in our 2 campaigns from qualifing for play offs at least.
2. in 1st campaign kerr took charge after we had already lost to the eventual two top teams.
3. he only had 1 full campaign and we were only a goal against the swiss from knocking them out.
4. the only team we lost to was the eventual WC runners up
5. granted we drew to israel twice when we should of won but nobody else in the group beat them and in fact they are the longest unbeaten team in european international football (maybe world football) having not lost in 3 years.
6. we never got hammered under him while we've lost 2 of our last 3 games by large margins.
7. while mostly our wins came in friendlies this was enough to keep our fifa rating up so by all this talk of 2010 we would be in a stronger position for that anyway.

i'm not saying he was bill shankly or anything but a hell of a lot better than what we have and from what i fear from what we will have. his major flaw was he was unable to motivate the players as his predessors had been able but if you listen the keane in relation to man united before he left this is rife in football in general nowadays. players prespective is gone out the window and are now immersed in a greed culture when the paycheck is more important than the winning. there are very few managers who seem to be able to get players to overperform on a regular basis. 2 i can think of are martin o'neill and sam alldaryce. if kerr was replaced with either of these it would be an improvement but to be replaced by a novice (and i bear no ill to stan) is a shambles and obviously in relation to this, yes, kerr was a relative success.

[Hibs4Ever]

Some great points there Galwayhoop, well said

[drinkfeckarse]

I was of the opinion that Kerr should go as I felt he didn't have the full dressing room and some of our performances were passionless.

Having said that, things have got worse under Stan so in that respect he's better than him. Two wrongs don't make a right though. Both were not cut out for it in my opinion.

[Calcio Jack]

IMO he was crap as well..... perhaps the question should be ; "Was Kerr a relative failure.."

[barney]

Kerr was a failure.

When was the last time, pre-Kerr that we failed to land second place in a group? 1985 under Eoin Hand. Thats eight campaigns.

How many top 70 teams did we beat under him in competition? None. Not Israel, not Switzerland and not Russia.

[ccfcman]

Well, I mean, Kerr at the time was a failure in many people's eyes, but people forget, we were going to the playoffs were it not for a wonder strike from Henry :/

Sure we had a few dodgy games vs Cyprus and points dropped against Israel, but we more than matched France, and were again rued by the ******* Swiss [clearly our #1 bogey team]

Looking back at it, we had a good man in Kerr, i would have expected him to pick up 5 points out of the Germany, Cyprus and Czech matches myself, whereas Stan is just picking up the pieces of a bloody disaster.

[tetsujin1979]

Success relative to what? To other Ireland managers? To Staunton, yes. To Mick, no - Mick never finished outside second spot. To Jack, no - qualified for 3 of the 5 qualifying series he was manager for.

[endabob1]

Kerr was a failure.

When was the last time, pre-Kerr that we failed to land second place in a group? 1985 under Eoin Hand. Thats eight campaigns.

How many top 70 teams did we beat under him in competition? None. Not Israel, not Switzerland and not Russia.

How many top 70 teams did we lose to? By tonight Stan will be level 2 in 4 years and 2 in 2 months!
How many teams outside the top 70 did we lose to? Stan is already ahead of the game here.

Kerr did lose his way and in particular against Israel and his refusal to accept that those 2 games were the ones when we should have grabbed the group by the nuts. I was only happy he was going because like millions of others I was led to believe we were getting someone better. What he gave is us a shambles that I wouldn't have imagined in my worst of nightmares.

[BaZmO*]

Relative to Stan's performances and results so far he was a rip-roaring success.

[BaZmO*]

Well, I mean, Kerr at the time was a failure in many people's eyes, but people forget, we were going to the playoffs were it not for a wonder strike from Henry :/

I'm sorry, but that's BS. You shouldn't be focusing on losing to France you should be focusing on not getting results for Israel and the Swiss.

[Dodge]

Relative to the crap standard of players he had. Yes. Charlton had McGrath then Keane, McCarthy had Kean 9in qualfying anyway). Kerr had nobody bar a world class keeper (who might get you draws but won't win you games). Kerr did exceptionally well to get within a goal of qualifying with these players and Staunton is proving that now.

And Before anyone starts, Keane was finished by the time Kerr got him to play

[Pablo]

Kerr wasnt given the time that McCarthy did. At least he knew how to organise a team

[eirebhoy]

I'm sorry, but that's BS. You shouldn't be focusing on losing to France you should be focusing on not getting results for Israel and the Swiss.

Sure, but at the end of the day a Thierry Henry goal was the only difference between us and France (our other 9 results were the exact same as France's). Israel, Switzerland, France and Ireland are teams that don't lose and especially at home. As someone has said Israel are doing very well and maybe this is their year to qualify for a major championships. Switzerland didn't concede a goal in the world cup while France didn't lose a match at the world cup.

Kerr was really unlucky imo. For the Euro 2004 qualifiers he decided to stick with Mick's players and hope for the best (he could have did a Stan and say he was rebuilding). This is the team that failed to beat Russia:
Given, Carr, O’Shea (Harte, 26), Cunningham, Breen, Holland, Healy, Carsley (Reid, 45), Kilbane, Duff, Morrison (Doherty, 73).

^ No Robbie Keane and a pretty mediocre team.

and the team that failed in Switzerland:
Given, Carr, Breen, O’Shea, Harte, Duff, Holland, Healy, Kilbane, Connolly, Keane.
Subs: Morrison for Connolly (58 mins), Kinsella for Holland, Finnan for Kilbane (75 mins).

^ No captain Cunningham.

I think it's really unfair to take anything from those qualifiers. He can obviously be judged by the WC qualifiers and on paper it was a definite failure. It wasn't his fault we didn't beat Israel at home though. That was the unluckiest Ireland performance I can remember. We conceded a header from outside the bloody box and then a penalty. We should have won by 5 goals and 99 times out of 100 we would have.

After that morale just dropped and when a decent performance against France resulted in nothing it was at rock bottom. The crucial Switzerland match comes along and our only creative player, Duff, is injured. We never looked like scoring.

I don't think Kerr was a relative success as we didn't even get to a playoff but I rate him highly as a coach. If I bought a club and I was looking for a manager he'd be the first person I'd be after.

As others have said it's a very vague question.

[theworm2345]

Yes, one goal/3 points away from the World Cup Playoff is a relative success

[BaZmO*]

Sure, but at the end of the day a Thierry Henry goal was the only difference between us and France (our other 9 results were the exact same as France's). Israel, Switzerland, France and Ireland are teams that don't lose and especially at home. As someone has said Israel are doing very well and maybe this is their year to qualify for a major championships. Switzerland didn't concede a goal in the world cup while France didn't lose a match at the world cup.

I just think it's too simplistic a view to say that the "only" reason why we didn't qualify was purely down to 2 seconds of genius by Henry.

Sure, but at the end of the day a Thierry Henry goal was the only difference between us and France (our other 9 results were the exact same as France's). Israel, Switzerland, France and Ireland are teams that don't lose and especially at home. As someone has said Israel are doing very well and maybe this is their year to qualify for a major championships. Switzerland didn't concede a goal in the world cup while France didn't lose a match at the world cup.

Kerr was really unlucky imo. For the Euro 2004 qualifiers he decided to stick with Mick's players and hope for the best (he could have did a Stan and say he was rebuilding). This is the team that failed to beat Russia:
Given, Carr, O’Shea (Harte, 26), Cunningham, Breen, Holland, Healy, Carsley (Reid, 45), Kilbane, Duff, Morrison (Doherty, 73).

^ No Robbie Keane and a pretty mediocre team.

and the team that failed in Switzerland:
Given, Carr, Breen, O’Shea, Harte, Duff, Holland, Healy, Kilbane, Connolly, Keane.
Subs: Morrison for Connolly (58 mins), Kinsella for Holland, Finnan for Kilbane (75 mins).

^ No captain Cunningham.

Ah now, I think you're being very selective there. Cunningham wasn't good enough to get us the win against Russia but somehow he was the missing saviour against the Swiss?

[eirebhoy]

Ah now, I think you're being very selective there. Cunningham wasn't good enough to get us the win against Russia but somehow he was the missing saviour against the Swiss?

I think we're seeing now with our current defence how big a part Cunningham played. A Breen-O'Shea partnership would be doing really well to keep a clean sheet against any team.

[dfx-]

Ridiculous early hindsight here...

We'd actually need a actual manager to succeed him to be able to compare whether he was a relative success. We haven't had that yet.

[Metrostars]

I just think that we (as fans) underestimated Switzerland and Israel. We expected to beat them, at least at home. Just look at how well the Swiss did in the World Cup. And it is also interesting to note that Huddink and his Russian side couldnt beat Israel last Saturday.

We are very much on the same level as Switzerland and Israel(who have not lost a competitive match for almost three years ). We still had a great chance until the last day to get to the playoffs. We just did not have enough quality/killer instinct/luck to get it done on the day.