Cult of Stephen Kenny

Are you sure the irfu and GAA need to meet this requirement? I was under the impression they don’t. That it is a requirement for the bailout money?

Ok, I missed that at the time.

I wonder how the IRFU will take it.

I still think there’s a certain irony in the government insisting on a gender quota that they don’t have any requirements to meet themselves.

Kenny and this team have amassed 6 points out of a possible 21.

Won 2 out of 7 matches.

28.57 % win rate….

however badly this reflects on the FAI… it also reflects pretty poorly on Kenny himself….

he should have the good grace now to say… “ didn’t go as I / we hoped, gave it my best, let someone else have a go “.

he’d walk into another LOI job.

this end to his tenure reflects very poorly on him as a person and football man…he should quit but I presume he’s hanging on to get pushed so he can get a payoff… that’s certainly what it looks like from here…..

FAI are calling his bluff, can’t qualify so let him at it….then that takes care of paying him off and having to hire and pay for a replacement too,

Kenny knows himself he’s not the man for the job…. He could quit, why doesn’t he ? Poor from him, he’s gone down a lot in my estimation….

His contract is up so no need to pay him off, they either give him another contract or bring in someone else.

Thing is there is a makings of a good team starting to come together after been forced to cobble together journeymen, has beens and never would be's for the last few years.

Bazunu

Ebosele Collins Egan Manning

Cullen Hodge

Ogbene Moran Knight

Ferguson

That has the makings of a decent team in the next couple of years with players playing at a good level and suitable to play the style of football Kenny would have wanted to rather that the compromises he had to make due to the personnel he had available. The next manager looks like he might be lucky with the type of player coming through. Lets hope they dont revert to low block zombie football

The narrative that has taken over is that Kenny wasn’t tactically adept enough to react in game to opponents.

this may be true but I think the reality is more that we try to play out from the back with players too limited to be able to do that. I think the media are driving a narrative that we can play progressively but Kenny wasn’t good enough in game to set us up in a way that progressive football would bear fruit.

and as for the final third, we are totally blunt in open play and depend on set pieces. We have no capacity to play through a defence other than get round the sides of them and try and whip in crosses.

this will probably go over most of your heads but the Brazilians play a form of football called futsal where there is a huge emphasis on technically flashy dribbling skills and fooling defenses. Futsal is massive in Brazil and that is why, in my opinion, they produce the best attacking players in the world.

Ireland has no futsal league or even an international team which is a total disgrace and I believe feeds into a big reason why we don’t produce flair players.

Ireland produce big solid committed good hearted players who can run long and fast, win second balls, defend and attack set pieces. But when it comes to unlocking a defence we haven’t a culture of being able to do that.

Potential doesn’t mean nothing. That’s a throwaway line that is bollocks.

No it isn't. loads of Irish players had potential over the years and never did anything in an Irish shirt. its pie in the sky rubbish.

danny crowley was going to be the answer, playing in league 2 for notts county, gavin kilkenny another one, liam kelly, playing in league 2 now. lee o connor in league 2. connor clifford ended up back in league of ireland.the guy who could have played for sweden and luxembourg, the list is actually endless. some Irish soccer fans are like the english media the way they get carried away with themselves over players who may end up in the lower leagues and never even get 1 senior cap for Ireland.

A lot of those names were built up by fools.

it’s a lot different to some of the players now. Ferguson and Collins and bazunu that have price tags or transfer fees between 15 and 125 million.

saying potential means nothing is a reductive foolish statement.

Well collins and Baz arent exactly living up to those big price tags. if you include cullen in your list, I have to question how you judge a player, cullen is a journeyman.

You have your head in the sand. if Bazunu went up for sale now, what would the price be?

Ebosle is starting in Serie A every week. Manning performing excellently at the top of the Championship, not a world beater but a solid option, Cullen a solid player who can play a role. And a team at the level Ireland strive to be at is always going to have to make do with few players who are solid but can fulfil roles in a system. Hodge and Moran are the type of players we needed to come through to make a functional team, which is exactly what I said in the post - "type of player". Even if they dont reach the very top of the game they are a player of a type we have not had coming through for years.

we will need more than 1 very good player.