Yup, pretty bad.Originally Posted by Diggs246
How can the dismissal of a person greatly underachieving in their highly-paid role, having been afforded unprecedented levels of time and patience, amount to a 'stab in the back'?
The board meets on Tuesday to discuss Kenny's future.
The stab in the back thing is obnoxious. If he was flying and fired then maybe
I also can't stand him infairing the tough draw isn't in any way Stephens fault
We are in pot 3 and Stephen is in no way free from criticism in relation to this
Here's the ultimate counter-example to Kenny.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66008108
A coach with a not dissimilar pool of talent (better midfield options, but probably weaker forward, defensive and goalkeeping options) achieving dramatically better results through organisation and professional coaching ability. Kenny is a spoofer who has been found out. There is nothing to be achieved by prolonging the agony. He will not suddently develop the skill-set of an international class coach no matter how much time, hope, goodwill or procrastination is expended in an obvious lost clause. Roll on Tuesday.
It's true they are arguably weaker in the areas you highlight them as being but in midfield they can pick
McGinn - new four year deal at moneybags Villa and when you consider him & Hourihane were together in midfield when they were promoted & the trajectory of our guy since, its fairly chalk & cheese.
McGregor - key midfielder in a golden Celtic period league wise.
McTomminay - ManU regular with 25 or so apps again last season.
Gilmour - nine million Brighton signing who tend to do good business, needs a better season than the one he just had granted.
Now I'm not defending SK here at all, by posting this but we can pick f u c k all like that across the middle & the middle of the pitch is quite important traditionally in winning games, controlling games & passing during games whatever you think of any manager at any given juncture in any team.
Stephen Kenny Saviour, Leader, Winner, An Autobiography - In All Good Bookstores Now
I think we'd take Tierney and Robertson in defence too.
They're surprisingly weak in nets and up front though - certainly they're outperforming us by way more than the squads would say
their midfield would cope in the prem for 38 games. ours is lower level championship. the levels are crazy. yeah they are weak in goals + up top but if you have a midfield + defence that good you should win more games than you lose
That day we beat them in Dublin the advantage got in midfield through Cullen and molumby was the key
molumby is a terrier, great in games when he can just chase after the ball. hes useless when we need passing from midfield imo. not near any of those scottish players. gilmour is the kind of player we badly need, someone with good ability on the ball who can dictate/change a game
Molumby was very good against Scotland I thought, both in and out of possession - we did win the game 3-0 after all - and largely as a result of that performance has emerged as a integral component of Kenny's team.
As poor as he was in the Athens debacle - a game in which few of our players emerged with any great credit - I don't think he's as technically inept as is being suggested. And certainly not 'useless', which is as you would expect as a product of the Brighton system.
I believe he had the highest pass completion rate of any WBA player last season and is currently being linked with an £8m move to Leeds.
I have a few issues with that article. Here's some of them
why didn't Sweeney mention the loss to Ukraine, which came before the Scotland game, and effectively ended any chance of promotion from the Nations League group after two games?His team played far worse when losing to Luxembourg and Armenia. The first game preceded a run of just one defeat, to an injury-time goal away against Portugal, in ten matches.
The second (the loss to Armenia) was followed, one week later, by a 3-0 win over Scotland which was Ireland’s best performance under Kenny. He deserves a shot at a similar redemption
win more game in the last two years, earn a higher ranking, and then not be in the third seeds?We say teams make their own luck. But the combination of the hardest possible group draw and the subsequent results elsewhere is sheer misfortune. What could Kenny do about either?
O'Dowda was part of the problem. Setting the team up to be overloaded three against two in the left of defence, where both goals came from, was a much bigger issue IMOHe has made mistakes. The wretched Callum O’Dowda was an accident waiting to happen in Athens. For all the talk of general tactical miscalculation, Ireland could have scraped a draw had James McClean started instead.
I would argue that that the last two long term managers were allowed to stay on for one campaign too many. Removing the current manager would be an example of moving away from those decisionsA lot of people caught Stephen Kenny’s dreams. If those dreams don’t come true it’ll leave a hole in Irish football’s soul. The return to reality will be painful enough without being preceded by a panicky decision smacking of the old FAI at its very worst.
100% in everything
He is a mortifying apologist for Stephen.
This article would indicate his rant on Monday was also nonsense
( I accept this journalist hates him, but I guess what he states is correct)
https://extra.ie/2023/06/25/sport/so...ers-misleading
https://m.independent.ie/opinion/com...558620855.html
This guy wants Stephen to get a new contract.
He finishes his article with this classic.
"The results are better then they appear"
Oh please please explain..
Tbf, I don't think losses to Netherlands and France are automatic sacking material. They are both sides that are just easily better than us. If they get their act together, they should beat us.
Now, if they are appalling performances and heavy defeats, maybe, but not just losses. It comes down to the manner of the performance - the loss to France was in an acceptable manner, for lack of better wording.
Same as with Gibraltar - just winning doesn't mean much, as that's a formality. It comes down to the manner of the performance, and in the first half that was pretty grim, but we sorted it out.
This is why the match with Greece was seen as such a barometer - it was the only match in the group against a side that we are relatively evenly matched against.
No we're not. We've never beaten them, in 20 years of trying. Probably won't beat them at home either.
Results can cover up bad performances. Gibraltar was one such example, the performance was awful, but you don't have to play well to beat them.
The team is woeful, especially at the beginning of international windows, then makes modest improvements as time goes on. Then they break up, and the process repeats itself in the next window. The only consistency is in the demands that the manager be sacked.
The next game is France away. Not really the No. 1 choice for a washed up ex-English manager hired on a king's ransom salary, to boot it 50 yards away from our own goal, and make an instant impact.
If FIFA Rankings are anything to go by, the two teams would appear to be very evenly matched:
IRL: Current Ranking 49, Average Ranking 33; Highest Ranking 6; Lowest Ranking 70;
GRE: Current Ranking 52, Average Ranking 31; Highest Ranking 8; Lowest Ranking 66.
https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/IRL
https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/GRE
Sometimes you just get what appear to be "bogey" teams, especially when it involves so tiny a sample size as 4 games, with 3 of them friendlies, and never more than a goal between the two sides:
https://www.11v11.com/teams/republic...sition/Greece/
Last edited by EalingGreen; 28/06/2023 at 11:55 AM.
https://m.independent.ie/sport/socce...702337485.html
CEO Jonathan Hill and Director of Football Marc Canham fed their input into discussions and it’s understood that each board member offered their say, with sources indicating that the ‘strong consensus’ was that Kenny should lead the team into the autumn.
There had been speculation that the Dubliner was on the ropes following the difficult defeat in Athens that left Ireland without a point after two Euro 2024 games but once the dust settled on the initial disappointment, there was never a genuine anticipation that the FAI would seek to make a change at this juncture.
...................
It goes on to speak about the by now persistent reports of who's turn it will be next.
Essentially nothing that wasn't known or deduced already, not the right time from any angle, by any vested interest party to be switching up.
Stephen Kenny Saviour, Leader, Winner, An Autobiography - In All Good Bookstores Now
There is speculation about his future after every single game, so nothing new there. It's a disgrace that people just won't allow him any leeway to do the job. McCarthy's friends in the media wrote him off before his very first game.
We win, he has to be sacked.
We don't win, he has to be sacked.
We win with a scrappy performance, and he still has to be sacked.
Win or not in Greece, we still had zero chance of qualification out of this group. This is the worst Irish squad in living memory, and results demonstrate that. So this is another development campaign to build a side capable of taking it's place at the top table of international football into the future.
[QUOTE=mypost;2152778]There is speculation about his future after every single game, so nothing new there. It's a disgrace that people just won't allow him any leeway to do the job. McCarthy's friends in the media wrote him off before his very first game.
We win, he has to be sacked.
We don't win, he has to be sacked.
We win with a scrappy performance, and he still has to be sacked.
Win or not in Greece, we still had zero chance of qualification out of this group. This is the worst Irish squad in living memory, and results demonstrate that. So this is another development campaign to build a side capable of taking it's place at the top table of international football into the future.[/QUOTE
No leeway! Thanks for the gag I needed a laugh
I wouldn't be slagging off the players as a way to boost Kenny. More players in the Premiership now too, so some top managers seem to disagree about their capabilities. I know Brady said the same thing, and I respect his view, but I think the early/mid 80s were worse, with players at top clubs just not performing consistently for Ireland. Which is worse, less glamorous players playing the best they can or top players not performing as they should? I think the current crop of players deserve more slack and respect.
Its not that long ago we were playing Cyrus Christie or Paul Green in midfield and Ronan Curtis up front, so I dont buy the worst ever squad in our history stuff. Its definitely a young squad though. I dont know the average ages exactly but I think there is a big difference to the average age of the end of MON era/Mick 2nd stint, to what it is today. So my thoughts on it are that its a squad that is still a work in progress but with a potential big upside, whereas some of the older squads of recent history had a feeling that we are going nowhere.
Of course the big debate is whether the manager is the right one to continue taking the squad forward and that debate keeps going around in circles. Chances are that this will be his last campaign so I do think its important that the next manager is not just a defensive old fashioned coach. Obviously some of the players need to start realizing their potential at club level and hope that translates to the international game
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