Cult of Stephen Kenny

Ah but you're wrong again. Kenny picks the squad and then picks the players he wants on the starting 11. We have a squad full of players playing in the Championship. He could have gone with this team for example

GK Travers - Championship

CB Duffy - PL Squad Player. Still far better than anything Armenia have.

CB Collins - PL Regular toward end of season

CB Egan - Championship Regular

RWB Coleman - PL Regular

LWB Manning - Championship Regular

CM Cullen - Belgian Top division Regular

CM Browne - Championship Regular

CM Knight - Championship Regular

FW Obafemi Championship Regualr

FW Robinson Championship Regualr. The guy gets plenty of minutes and starts.

We have plenty of players playing at a high level of football in the championship.

The excuses for being beaten by the like of Luxembourg and Armenia don't stack up when it comes to the quality of player argument.

Most of Armenias team are playing internally in Armenia.

there is a cult around Kenny but there’s also a feel good atmosphere from supporters which leads to big gates at the Aviva.

if Kenny gets us relegated from group B of the NL he may pay the price as the cult is a fickle mob just like the Kenny out brigade is also a fickle mob.

Ask the fans who have been flocking to the Aviva for dead rubbers

We should be beating those everytime we play them but I wouldn’t say we can be complacent about beating them.

Teams win by scoring goals, Ireland have had just three squad members with good goal scoring seasons: obafemi, keane and Parrott. These are mainly very young and with the possible exception of Parrott very inexperienced at international level. Look at foden and Jason sancho for England. Very talented players but haven’t really being very good consistently for England yet.

Breaking through at international level is gradual. Even superb talents find this.

We don't have the players to expect to qualify for tournaments. I agree. We don't have the players to expect to get results against top 20 teams on a regular basis.

I think we have the players to consistently beat teams like Luxembourg and Armenia on a regular basis which ensures that we remain relevant in groups until the last couple of games. Everyone knows that we need to take 6 points in a qualifying group off the like of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Luxembourg. You have to be doing that. We have pretty much always done that before.

The cycle with the Irish team since McCarthy v1 has been boom and bust.,though the booms were not overly spectacular. Kerr and Staunton were flops. Trap was a stabiliser for a few years til his bubble got popped. O'Neill the same thing. Mccarthy and Kenny quite similar to Kerr/Staunton.

The Irish football system has been underdeveloped for decades and the quality of player being produced has been on a downward spiral since the 90s. No manager you get in will change that. The best they can do is temporarily halt the progress with some sort of tactical nous and man management.

But, like picking a scab, it may feel good, but it helps nothing. A manager helps arrest the decline and that in turn eases pressure on the FAI to really do something about some fundamental problems in Irish football. If said manager actually manages to fluke into a tournament using the same old, same old, it's worse again. No-one wants to even acknowledge the problems when it's party time. It's all very short term thinking.

There hasn't been a truly great player to emerge out of this country since Robbie Keane. Address that and managers were get in will likely start to seem as lot better.

Yeh I'm sure the players love getting bet by Armenia and Luxembourg.

You are going to struggle to find fans in the Aviva or particularly those who paid good money to travel to Arminia, who share your optimism at the moment.

CR7

a media spoofer

tactically inept

won 5 out of 23 matches

him and his cult can take a long running jump….

england fail and can ask themselves how?, they have a great league, great facilities, great players, great history.

Ireland fail and we can’t ask ourselves any of those questions. We get the appropriate return to our level of investment

irish football is small time, Kenny is a manager who, apart from the Europa league group stages, has only managed at small time levels of the game.

It's the failure against Armenia, Luxembourg, Azerbaijan and Qatar I think is the issue. We're not taking about failing to win world cups or even qualifying for tournaments. If beating teams of a much less rank and quality of us isn't a key factor for determining managing success then we really are lost.

As I've said failure to win tonight and we could be out of the group at this early stage. The Nations League is a backdoor into the Euros and something we shouldn't ignore. We need a win tonight.

You are correct

The playoffs will consist of the best teams from the Nations league that do not qualify directly, I believe ?