Second Captains Part II

he was where on merit?

Its hard to see someone do better then 5 wins in 26 games? Alright..... I think I'll set my expectations a little higher then that personally.

This argument of letting Kenny see out the campaign for dignity is a load of ****. What happens if we lose at home to Greece.? There's no dignity in that

Delaney spoke superbly as to why he should go

Damien Delaney was excellent today on the pod. I actually thought he really showed up Richie, in terms of Richie's "well what would you do?" approach to the discussion.

Yeah, that was a bit weird from Ken. Always thought Delaney and Kerr were a bit too harsh on Kenny, but he spoke brilliantly today.

And another thing that made no sense - we should keep him on because there's an off-chance we could get a play-off.. Surely the exact opposite would be the case?

Yep, he has to go. He's had his time.

Losing home and away to France and Holland is expected. Taking 3 points from Greece is probably about right (or 2 points). We are performing about as well as expected in the group. The issue isn't necessarily points, its the nature of the losses. Poyet and Koeman won both games for their teams and Kenny never reacted. Thats the issue.

No it's not! When have we lost home and away to the top seeds in qualification groups in the last 40 years? When we have the manager has been rightly heavily criticised and sacked. When has failure become so easily accepted. Prior to Kenny, McCarthy was lambasted and he had 2 excellent teams in his group. He only lost 1 of the 4 games against the top seeds.

Now we're supposed to accept trying to scrape third against Greece and Luxembourg is what we should expect. Under any other manager, the aim in this group would have been to knick a draw against France at home, beat Holland at home, get 4 points from Greece and then see where that leaves us going into the last game. And that's not unrealistic. For some reason, abject failure has become acceptable under Kenny.

Is it just me or is half the second captains output now half filled by pithy little montages, most of which are repeats? Also finding most of the interactions between the hosts to be stale and laboured with the old dynamic that made their name largely gone.

The quality of the regular guests are still top notch but the actual time per week spent on actual sports discussion to be limited. Only noticing really now as there were always a couple of OTB broadcasts in any given week that would fill out my playlist. Now that they are gone behind the paywall I notice the gap. Almost considering subscribing to OTB instead as while the quality is mixed, through sheer volume there is always just about enough quality listening in any given week

Thank you for engaging. Really positive

I think they agreed on everything tbh, any support ken had left was really him just playing devils advocate

You asked the question. Apologies if the reply was a bit glib.

I couldn't disagree more with the take that with the OTB podcasts disappearing behind a paywall, this has somehow magnified the 'stale and laboured' interactions between the lads. The output of the SC & OTB couldn't be further in quality than each other. You acknowedge that the quality is mixed, but you have to wade through some volume of sh1t to find any little diamonds on that feed.

That the quality of the SC product is still so high all these years on is a testament to them.

You just backed up my post. As I said whenever we've lost to the top seeds home and away, the manager has been criticized and sacked! It actually rarely happens that we lose to the top seeds (meaning the seeds above us). Facts getting in the way of your argument unfortunately.

Who was comparing those players? More strawmaning. The actual comparison was between McCarthy and Kenny because they basically had the same squad except Kenny had a whole host of young talent coming through. McCarthy's record: played 10, won 5, drew 4, lost 1. Kenny's record: played 36, won 10, drew 11, lost 15. That speaks for itself.

Yes and was sacked!

We've had better players in the past but that's counteracted by it being far easier to qualify for major tournaments now. Why couldn't we beat Holland? At least drawn, as we've been saying, it's very rare that we lose to the top 2 seeds in a group home and away. It doesn't happen. 9 points is not par, nowhere close. It hasn't been acceptable in the past and it shouldn't be now.

Kenny has had a better squad than Mick but many of the same players. Remember, McCarthy came close to qualifying with a midfield of Hendrick, Whelan and Hourihane, 3 of our most heavily criticised players.