Cult of Stephen Kenny

You seem to have interpreted "makings of a good team starting to come through" as "going to be brilliant"

Look at Croatia, who are operating a level and playing a brand of football we could only dream of. Most of their players are in the lower reaches of Serie A, Bundesliga, La Liga and a handful of smaller leagues and their own domestic league, with a couple of stars.

I’m not saying that there is a host of great players ready to come through or that you are wrong about Cullen etc but comments like “potential means nothing” or the “championship is meaningless” are wide of the mark

On the next World Cup, with the expansion of the tournament, UEFA has 16 slots available.

UEFA are planning smaller groups for this qualifying, with 12 groups of 4/5 teams, top side straight into the World Cup. The 12 runners up, and the 4 highest ranked Nations League sides will be split into 4 knockout groups of 4 based on seedings, with each group consisting of two SF's and a final, with the winners of each group going to the World Cup.

So there's a solid chance we can at least make the playoffs if we get a decent draw. And with a smaller group, there's every chance a couple of decent results could see us directly.

So at the very least going forwarded, whoever the manager is you'd be hoping that with the smaller group they'd have some sort of a plan in place, because at the moment I can't see Kenny's style of play getting us anywhere.

He will be gone now after this round of games as results this evening ended all hopes of Ireland still having an outside chance.

If that was the case he would have gone a long time ago the FAI just couldn’t afford to pay him off if they sacked him

He has of tonight has officially failed to qualify so that is the end of his contract and they don’t have to pay him off now.

maybe we can have a cult of Pat Dolan thread next, or the cult of Liam Buckley….

seeing as the FAI are determined to listen to the wants, whims and obsessions of their LOI fan mob who have no doubt masturbated themselves into a state of dehydration since Kerr & now Kenny have taken over the Ireland team…

Stephen Kenny and his cohorts failed at every opportunity to qualify for a tournament.

Brian Kerr and his cohorts failed at every opportunity to qualify for a tournament.

they were both afforded great time, support, resources and opportunity, and more then one campaign….

so, they’ve nobody to blame but themselves….

the greatest leaders / managers all have one thing in common… when their back is against the wall, when their resources are stretched or limited, when they are behind the 8 ball, when they are written off…. They find a way….

our teams are now never near being in a position to even find that sort of ‘pull it out of the fire’ recovery…

no goals in the team, little composure, bad decisions on the sideline…..a mess… the qualifying table reflects this..

with a bit of luck we might have a gem in Ferguson….. we probably need another three… but what will help is a manager with guile, top level experience, the ability to motivate and tactically facilitate a limited team to get results greater than which the sum of their talent might suggest possible…

Kenny has failed…. The FAI has failed….but do the FAI learn from their mistakes ? Highly fücking doubtful…the culture of decision making in that organisation is so very shït.

Hearing rumours of Kenny being actually given a new contract. The FAI have no money and they want Kenny to remain but with less pay.

That wouldn't surprise me. We won't be qualifying for US/Canada/Mexico in 2026 so with everyone over the age of 12 in the country getting a cap from Kenny.

Everybody’s great basically. He’s a sound man but there wasn’t really any insight.

his price is only that if he gets sold for that. He’s gone nowhere yet and only just signed a new contract with Brighton 2-3 weeks ago…

it will take a lot more then backing the ability of one all be it talented kid who is just gone 19 a few weeks ago, to pull Ireland out of the mire.

Why would the FAI have money? Like why should they have a good lot of money?

so you think that because of tournament qualifications 4 years apart many years ago under the Delaney era which ended in a financial bailout, that the current FAI should be on a firm financial footing to meet the requirements and all the various mouths to feed in Irish football? I’m not sure about these Covid bailouts from UEFA. Google hasn’t heard of them because support was drawn down in the Delaney era that meant Covid payments from UEFA were denied.

there were Covid support payments from the government as there was for all national sport associations. You will have noticed I hope that stadiums during this period were without any fans thus meaning the FAI had no ticket revenue for 2(?) years. So if they got support, well you can see why they did and what it was compensating for?

do you think the Scottish fa have to financial support their domestic league or the other European leagues have to manage and financially support their domestic league?

or do you think they can support themselves?

post the Delaney era the government bailed out the FAI and wanted strict financial governance which led to new board members, more independent board members more gender balanced board members….fine, financial governance is good….but was there a single discussion had at government level about how 10 years on from the bailout that Irish football could become an industry like it is in most countries?

it seemed that the plan was for Irish football to have better financial governance but a plan was never discussed about the economics of Irish football whereby the men’s senior international team were expected to support everything else in Irish football.

this arrangement whereby the Ireland MNT supports everything is not sustainable unless Ireland qualify very regularly to tournaments and that is not going to happen.

better financial governance is useless to a business if you have insufficient finance to govern.

Ok I explained it and you’re sticking to your guns which you are entitled to do. The men’s national team should support the entirety of football in Ireland.

Which League of Ireland team will he end up at?

Another sleeping giant of provincial soccer could be reawakened by his Midas touch.