Republic of Ireland Team 2023/24 [old thread]

People are whinging because people like JP McManus who avoids living here to save paying more tax are receiving tax money to fund it. And no is asking for them not to receive a penny. I know people here in Limerick who'd probably be locked up if it wasn't for horse racing or just walking the roads. I'm from one of the council estate where people have a big interest in horses. But know a lot more talented footballers who fell through the cracks because there's no footballing industry here for people to often see it as a viable opportunity to progress in life.

People are asking that a little money from the tax on gambling earned from betting on football actually gets used to build infrastructure and a footballing industry here.

An anomaly 30 years ago with top players.

I wonder what impact or ranking and lack of being competitive will or is having on decent eligible players declaring for us.

We have always relied on players born abroad lining out for us...just wonder will that start to die away

One of his better press conferences he seems to give better press conferences when he gets annoyed. So the logic now seems to be the Wales logic under Thosack where they just kept playing the young players as a group. Hoping they click overtime with more experience regardless of the results. Kenny seems to have gotten the OK from the FAI to go this route from the way he is talking.

Kenny has an added advantage that Thosack did not. The FAI are potless and can't sack him. Plus there are not loads of alternatives.

I think it already has, Grealish, Rice and Bamford would have been more tempted if Ireland looked anyway decent or had prospects. Now the ROI is left taking the right dregs who are eligible to play. Competing with the level of player NI are after. At the moment if you were English and looking for international football you would more likely pick NI ahead of the ROI at this stage.

Good riddance to what? Young men whose parents or parent decided to leave Ireland, stay in England, have children, they play soccer, they come through the English underage system and decide they want to play for us? Those young men are Irish and if they want to play for us, I welcome them.

I mean thats great and all to say that but reality is,rightly or wrongly, we have always depended on players to declare for us.

What do you mean "the logic now" ? that was always the plan and the whole point of appointing the former u21 manager. He always had the OK

Something else has changed too. England, under Southgate, are actively scouting anyone and everyone eligible for them playing at lower levels than would have been the case before. A lot of them won't have a future with England but they'd be tied down anyway with ambitious talk and a game.

They are fully entitled to be fair. Most of these lads see themselves as English.

The last few pages of the thread have been horrible to read and just goes to show the state we are in at the moment, but it is the same conversations we have been having for about 4 years now. There are so many massive problems within Irish football; the FAI themselves, the League of Ireland, lack of academy structure, poor facilities, the obsession with English football, etc. Yet it is always the national team getting a bad result that brings out the anger in people.

The fanbase seems fairly split at the moment on whether Kenny deserves to stay in the job or not, realistically I think he has the job until November and then the FAI will have a decision to make. I am as frustrated with the results and performances as anyone, but I don't know if sacking him will achieve anything. The current squad of players we have is the worst we have had in such a long time, the gap of players between the 1992 until around 1999 age groups is a huge problem and we essentially have some players who are either past or should be at their 'peak', combined with a load of players who are inexperienced and are still just in the potential phase.

The fans who are so firmly Kenny out, the question is what do we do differently? Who do we appoint? On OTB today I heard them going through potential candidates, the list was embarrassing to be honest. Tactically what do we do differently? If we just set up defensively and aim to play long maybe we draw 0-0 with Luxembourg instead of losing, but what is the point in that?

The results have been fairly pathetic under Kenny, there is no sugarcoating that. Maybe he does not deserve to stay in the job past this campaign. But I do think he is the most suitable man for the job and that we will be the better for it further down the line. If there was another candidate who made a lot of sense available come December then maybe I'd see things differently, but there are not many who know Irish football better than him.

The anger coming out when the national team get a bad result is because a lot of people's interest in Irish football starts and stops with the mens senior team.

I see some people are using Toshack as some sort of justification that what Kenny is doing is the correct course of action. Other than the fact that Toshack capped a lot of players, I really don't see any comparisons between him and Kenny. Firstly, despite Toshack inheriting a complete mess where swathes of the senior team retired after a player revolt, he still managed a 42% win rate. Secondly, he also had to send a letter to the players, questioning their commitment after a number of them repeatedly pulled out of competitive qualification games, it was little wonder he ended up calling up so many kids, there was literally no one else there. Also, of all the dozens of debuts he gave, only handful ever made it. Finally, what people are ascribing vision to what ultimately was luck. I am fairly confident that the top players that Toshack gave debuts to, were going to be come good regardless.

Just randomly throwing a few caps at a player isn't going to improve them. It's interesting, I generally find that the players who make the breakthrough are often the ones that don it very quickly. Kelleher at Liverpool, Omobamidele at Norwich, Collins at Burnley, Kilkenny at Bournemouth, Knight at Derby, etc. These players made a breakthrough at club level before they were/have been capped. Good players will always force their way into the international setup, they don't need to handed a cap to do so.

I don't think comparisons are needed or wanted. Kenny was brought in and given a rebuilding remit with a view to a more positive brand of football. He'll cost less for multiple years then any of his predecessors cost for a year.

We've been brutal for donkeys. It's worth a punt. Thats the black and white of it really.

That well ran dry a long time ago. The English FA aren't going to allow any more decent players to slip through their fingers ever again. We'll still get the championship level players like Robinson who have no chance with England.

The days of grabbing a McAteer, Babb, or Townsend were already done.

Is there another profession in the world where it would it be argued that someone shown to be completely out of their depth ought to be kept on because the replacement would - supposedly - not improve things? Is there evidence for that assumption? Look at how low the bar is. We want a coach that can actually manage to beat a team besides Andorra, and not be winless in 11 competitive games. Not exactly asking for the moon and stars here.

Realistically, we're not going to win a tournament any time soon. The best we can hope for as a country is to get to a tournament and give a respectable showing. Sides like the Swiss and the Danes should be an example to us. Kenny himself has cited the Danes as a team he would like us to emulate. Is he going to be the man to get us to a tournament and compete with such teams when he is struggling to get results against Luxembourg and Azerbaijan? We have to get real.

I also don't buy this argument that hiring a pragmatic coach will affect the young players coming through. Look at England. They have been encouraging youngsters for more than a decade to play a brand of possession-based, offensive football. Yet what Southgate do at the Euros? Serve up a style based largely on the defence, and giving the initiative to the opposition. It didn't bother the English fans who got swept up in the highs of the results they were getting, and it also won't affect the young players developing because the Southgate tactics have no bearing on that. The idea we need to put up with poor results under Kenny in order to help our young players coming through is a myth.

It was so bad that even though I was getting free tickets for every game, I just stopped going.

Imagine how epic the anti-English videos will be on the eve of a friendly vs England when Lennon is in charge!

I would rather see Keane and Micah Richards brought in as a duo and make it a Netflix documentary like they have with Sunderland or Spurs, and that's not me trying to be hyperbolic about it. I'd honestly rather see that than Lennon ever getting near the Irish job.

Can't argue with your statement in that they've looked more like an u21 side at times, but on the other hand I think he has needed to play these younger players as there aren't very good options available.

You could be right about Parrott for example, but equally he could click and be an important player. We don't have any standout players to play in the front 5/6 positions so it is a case of trying some younger players and hoping they come good. I don't think he has called up any young player for the sake of it, they are all selected because there is the potential for them to be an important player for us - however chances are not all of them will be.

How long is Coleman gonna be around for anyway, and that's not me saying sure move him on. He got injured last October and missed the nation's league games in October and November. Picked up another injury against Azerbaijan. He's turning 33 and will be 34 going into the euro qualifiers. In his last three seasons since coming back from that bad injury he's played 29, 27, and 25 leagues. So each season he's playing less league games. An injury could force him to step aside sooner than Coleman just not wanting to play.

As for Duffy, I'd say Duffy has big respect for Kenny. Kenny brought in David Forde to help Duffy last season, and his tweet the other day about it being on us as players seems to me he's got Kenny's back.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if the FAI take a 'results is king' lesson from this and go for a cheap Sam Allardyce. This is the FAI were talking about.

Lookit, I'm all on board for the 'rebuild' and the change of style. I want to see players like Josh Cullen line up in midfield for Ireland and be encouraged to get on the ball and play it instead of watching poor Glen Whelan and Keith Andrews spend their entire international careers looking up at the sky as the ball is booted over their heads.

I'm under no illusions about where we are in terms of the quality of player available. We're in the process of changing out virtually the entire national squad in short order, and we're missing experienced internationals who are remotely good enough in their peak years.

Kenny's had bad luck with COVID making it impossible for him to settle on a team early on, and out of the established senior players who you're relying on as leaders, I would say that only three - Coleman, Duffy & Egan - have performed consistently well for him.

But in spite of all the preceding, we had far more talent on the pitch than either Luxembourg or Azerbaijan and failed to beat them. Never really looked like beating them. I can understand why people look at that and think: "This guy's in over his head."

Ideally I'd like to see us beat Serbia, build on it in the next window, keep playing progressive football and Kenny go on to be a success. But the record to date is poor and if that doesn't happen I genuinely don't know what the correct solution is.

Big Sam and cheap, two words that don't belong in the same sentence. The man wouldn't even entertain the idea for anything less than a million.

Pints of wine would cost a fortune at Dublin prices