no evidence to back that up given what we produced under him. ireland should have won in the 120 mins with kenny in charge. those sitters from browne and hourihane were a jokeOriginally Posted by BOOMSHAKALAKA
Everyone is fair game when it comes to defending Kenny. Trapatoni, O Neill, Keane, McCarthy, Randolph, Obefami, the list goes on. It's like a cult, you dare not disrespect the glorious leader.
no evidence to back that up given what we produced under him. ireland should have won in the 120 mins with kenny in charge. those sitters from browne and hourihane were a joke
We were undefeated against the Euro semi finalists under McCarthy. Slovakia had a covid crisis and we had a full squad including Mcgoldrick. A perfect chance for Kenny to kickstart his reign but he failed.
The way you and others are acting, you'd swear Kenny's and McCarthy's records were the other way around.
HEY!!!
McGeady deserved your worship, still deserves it.
All hail McGeddy.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
Did we not get to the Euro playoffs based on being 4th in our group in NL under O'Neill and were basically in playoffs by default?
Anyone who wants to know anything about Mick v2.0 just needs to look at the first 30 seconds in Gibraltar. He had the chance to set the tone and literally kicked it away up up up into the sky in the middle of a hurricane.
Darren Randolph wasting time on a goal kick 20 mins into the game in Georgia was the pinnacle of my frustration with McCarthy. Played for a draw in a game we really needed to win
Aye well this is basically it so knock it on the head mate.
THE BOSS is THE BOSS
Really not much more to say
BOOMSHAKAKENNY!!
Nutshell.
Cult SK has risen to power led by Stephen himself & were all enjoying the journey. Big happy cult bus of real soccer people. Been waiting since 86 for this day.
So you might as well save your fingertips there ( as several of your equals are doing ) because we're only laughing at you between reading about his new contract, again and again.
Did we lose to Belgium? The utter miserable state of half this thread. Ignore and move on folks. You're wasting your time on someone who sees themselves in some sort of weird righteous opposition to fanaticism and Messiah worship where none exists.
As a Mick fan, we may have qualified, but it would have been with an agricultural style and lots of older players. Kenny is using lots of young players and has essentially carried out a lobotomy in terms of playing style. Sacrifices have been made, long line King Kenny!
The way I see it, much of it was prompted by trolling from multiple pro-Kenny fans taunting people who had "suddenly gone quiet". Then, a couple of people dare respond and it's proof of what exactly? This pathetic "pro-Kenny"/"anti-Kenny" polarization ****e. Let people express their opinions without having a ****ing meta-discussion about the discussion on every damned thread.
Ok get us back on track John. How do you feel now about the match? Did we play well? Are you optimistic for the future?
Amen. The team has probably never had so many players from the third tier in England and yet we just got a creditable draw against the World no.1 team. And played some nice football too.
God forbid what the naysayers would be attacking if we'd won....no doubt saying it was a weakened Belgium side. Not as weak as us all the same!
Folding my way into the big money!!!
He didnt get us to a euro play off though did he? That was through the nations league (somehow). I like McCarthy by the way, he should have got the gig again prior to when he did after O'Neill. He played the best football i saw an ireland team play in his first spell in charge. But football has moved on, as has been clear enough from McCarthys last few gigs.
I've come around to probably somewhere close to the middle on Kenny. He can't be clubbed indefinitely on the Luxembourg game and recent results are, at worst, solid and, at best, encouraging. I still think he needs the Nations League to go relatively painlessly but that would be true of any manager.
It's still a pretty bad Irish team too by the standards we're used to. I think he plenty of weaknesses still (or 'opportunities for improvement' in office speak) but I don't think any rational person could seriously believe he's still dragging the team down below it's natural level (though he definitely was at one point early in his tenure).
Friendly or no that Belgian draw was a good result too and it would be fairly indicative of a learning disability to try and frame it as a meaningless game against their B side (a furiously tabloid labelling anyway). If anything it was a real chance for their fringe players to make a serious statement of intent and impress Martinez. In that context they should have been at least as fired up as our side.
I still don't really believe Kenny is likely to oversee any of the majorly massive nights in Irish football history but the future is all speculative anyway (and there are enough other issues that even if he was peak era Ferguson/Clough/Mourinho/whoever you fancy there might not be great days ahead). Right now though? There's been enough clear and tangible improvement in results that he should have built up a bit of credit with any reasonably minded observer.
Remember when Michael O'Neill managed NI and the big question was how they managed to get results at international level with lesser players? We are managing to get okay results whilst playing nice football. I can remember an NI team at the Euros against Poland in 2016 which was more or less a 5-4-1 with 8 of the outfield players being defenders or fairly defensive and then Davis and Lafferty.
The thing about the Belgian game is that I was very conditioned to view an early opposition opening goal as being an absolute disaster. I immediately saw it as a disaster for us based on previous experiences. How would we stop them from scoring any more? How would we ever manage to create enough chances to convert and get ourselves back in the game?
Again, that was conditioning. We got into the game with some good attacking play and bouts of pressure. There were times that Belgium played through our midfield a little too easy and Tielemans probably didn't break much of a sweat. But the game and result was reflective of what occurred at the far ends of the pitch with Egan and Doherty having fine games and Ogbene and Knight working tirelessly with Robinson having some really great moments.
Even when we were down a goal for about a half hour after the Vanaken header, there was little panic and the players seemed assured that we could get back into it if we kept going as we were.
Ok, it was a friendly and it wasn't Belgium at full strength but that side would be better than most third seeds and even some second seeds.
Hopefully we can maintain this foundation now and Kenny can continue to bring through our brighter young players. I won't write them all off yet but succession planning for Coleman, McClean and Hendrick is looking like a short to medium term priority.
Jeff Hendrick is only 30 and playing very well for us, he wouldn't be too much of a priority to replace at moment in my opinion. I would actually say that he's probably Kenny's biggest success for how he's turned him around
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