Cult of Stephen Kenny

Crawford is simply a former LOI footballer and a very decent one who progressed to playing a handful of games for Newcastle United, actually I’ve checked it and a few less then a handful.. he played twice for em.

Coaching..

2008 Shamrock Rovers (interim)

2016–2019 Republic of Ireland U18 (Coach)

2018–2020 Republic of Ireland U21 (Assistant)

2020–Republic of Ireland U21 (Manager)

absolutely nothing approaching a pedigree or experience whereby you’d want him near an Ireland senior setup at this juncture of his coaching career.

I think some of the logic of getting Kenny in (apart from the relatively low salary in comparison to previous managers) is the idea that he could achieve something similar to what Michael O'Neill did with the North. Like O'Neill, Kenny's CV wasn't exactly glittering before getting the national job, and like O'Neill, Kenny hasn't been impressive out of the gate. O'Neill's NI finished second to last in their WC 2014 qualifying bid. But O'Neill came good following on from that. He got NI to their first ever Euros and took them arguably closer to getting to the WC 2018 than our own lot (they didn't lose 1-5 to their playoff opposition).

The FAI clearly seem prepared to give Kenny at least as much runway as O'Neill got, i.e. two full qualifying campaigns.

As I see it, the simple fact is this: until the right standard of player is there, the team can look to play a modern type of game but lack the awareness and skill to make this work consistently or they can revert to type and play a cautious way with no plan B if get behind the ball and try to nick a set piece doesn't work. I've followed Ireland long enough now to know that fans will complain about either approach and will, without fail, claim in the aftermath of a loss that the thing the team should have done is the thing they didn't do in the game. It's just eternally "the grass is always greener on the other side".

We should expect to beat Azerbaijan and Qatar at home, against Lux, we should be expecting better performances, but it’s arrogant to think that we should beat them every time we step onto the pitch with the squad we have.

And at this stage of Kenny’s tenure, we should be expecting better results. Not one Irish fan I know personally has said otherwise. And if he doesn’t qualify for the Euros he should go.

But the ‘we should go back to hoofing the ball because that worked for us once (2016, 2012 was a disgrace) in the last 20 years’ fanboys/ cult need to stop ignoring the fact that Kenny started from a very low base and has actually tried out a ton of new players and to implement a system that may or may not work.

Given the almost constant failure aside from the O’Neill years, which turned poisonous, I’ll take it for now, it may bring us somewhere, it may not. I don’t want to settle for scraping into a playoff and getting tonked by the first decent team we meet, which is why I’m reasonably happy that he’s at least trying to change things similar to what the other O’Neill did up north.

Thats not being a ‘Kenny fanboy,’ it’s reasonable support for a manager who is not limiting himself to finding the next Simon Cox to hoof it up to, rinse and repeat. Because that has been the alternative since Mick’s first reign in charge.

A real LOI culture we have inherited.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

We are where we are because of what has gone on before. It isn’t arrogant to think we should beat Luxembourg, it is just the reality of how far our standards and expectations have dropped. Even with a team full of championship players, most would expect them to be good enough to beat Luxembourg.

Incidentally, the team at the weekend included 6 premiership plays, though I’m not sure I should count Parott in that, and a guy I never heard of who apparently plays for Anderlect.

Most genuine supporters care more about change of style and long term planning than who the manager is. Belgium used to play turgid negative football until the early 2000's and then they made a plan which didn't really yield results for a decade or more.

Those who are 'defending' Kenny are actually defending what they hope is radical change taking place at all levels of the national team and defending the idea of long term planning. What we fear is that the changes being made are abandoned, and every few years we have either a second rate or semi retired manager coming over with their uncompromising ideas telling us all how to do it and not giving two s**ts about the underage development.

No kowloonkev, most “genuine supporters” do not care more about change of style than the manager. They care more about the fact that the results have been atrocious and the change of style has benefitted us to the point that we struggle to beat some of the worst teams on the planet.

There may be a greater proportion of them, but I'm not sure how accurate this black and white 'LOI diehards support Kenny' is. I'm one of those (check my posting history) and think he should be long gone.

If people have a browse of foot.ie they'll see LOI fans who think he should be gone and non-LOI fans who think he should get more time.

Unlike Stephen Kenny who is a "Non Long Ball Expert" who loses 1-0 to Armenia and Luxembourg

Yes they've actually gotten much worse. We are now losing to teams worse than Georgia, rather than mostly beating them and occasionally drawing with them in admittedly drab encounters. I'll take what we had before over passing the ball around the back for 75 minutes and lumping it for 5, then losing anyway - under this so called philosophy.

Surely you see that you have to make the most of the tools are your disposal. You might think it’s an improvement to play a more aesthetically pleasing brand of football, but if they are getting turned over by the dregs of world football, you have to question if the experiment is working.

Yes I completely agree.

And for the most part I don't think the football has been more aesthetically pleasing - at least I get no pleasure from seeing our back 5 pass it between them repeatedly. I feel some people would be happier if they did away with the scoreboard and started only throwing up the possession statistic in the corner of the tv screen and in the stadium.

Well the 4-0s vs Azerbaijan and Qatar and the 3-0 vs Luxembourg we’re better to watch than we are used to. 2-2 vs Belgium was entertaining aswell.

we were an incredible team under McCarthy and Oneill because no matter who was the opposition we would score 1 goal and 1 goal only. It was freakish but not great aesthetically

How many teams have the players necessary to play football that is good to watch, and win regularly as a consequence of playing that way?

2 of those results were friendlies. Friendlies are meaningless.

Martin O'Neill's Ireland destroyed Uruguay in a friendly a few years ago - if that was Kenny lads would be using it as an excuse for him to get a 10 year contract.

Mick McCarthy beat New Zealand 3-1 in a friendly - again, nobody cared about that then but when Kenny beats Qatar in a friendly there's a communal orgy amongst some of the support.

I would also argue that it's far easier to throw caution to the wind - to go and win 4-0 v Azerbaijan or 3-0 v Luxembourg, because there was nothing to play for. Kenny had us eliminated from the group within 2 games. Mick or MON always had us in contention until the end. That meant we had something to protect and hang on to, which in turn is going to affect how you set up in games. When the pressure is off these lads are capable of beating international minnows. Considering he only has 2 competitive wins in 16, not even that happens often. When the pressure is on, they lose to them. Hardly something to be hanging your hat on.