Cult of Stephen Kenny

The nonsense of building for the future is just that nonsense,

Maybe with Nations like England,France ,Germany can treat it like club football but International football for lower nations is about results right now, we have no control of our players as they all go to play in different countries, So you must make the most of what you have right here & now to get results,

Who cares about style of play ,you have to be pragmatic and use players in the best possible way to get results

Look at 2 years ago there was great hope for Parrot, Idah, Connolly ,Obafemi but all have taking backwards steps in development ,As Ireland manger its useless planning long term , play the best side in the here and now & with the style that give s you the biggest chance of a result ,

Mix it up a little.

But one thing you gotta do is take take maximum points against Armenia, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan. That has to be done.

Kenny has had the worst crop of players, Trap, 0' Neil, McCarthy never had to pick league 1 players.

I still can't get over the fact that the entire Ukrainian defence last night had 1 cap (one) and it was our centre back Duffy that was our most dangerous player.

What wrong with the thinking ,

The senor team have zero control over players form one end of the year to another & other larger nations know they will have players capable of playing which ever style they wish,

We don't have that luxury we have to throw a starting 11 together of lads from so many different levels of the game,

We have to be pragmatic to have any kind of success ,

We are not a club side ,we need to stop approaching it like we are

How that fcuker Kenny is still in the job is a mystery, why he got any sort of an extension was a joke. Any other Inrenational manager would be gone. Have a bit of pride Stephen, resign and take your backroom staff with you.

We can illustrate this point by contrasting Mick V1 and Mick V2. Mick V1 had the team playing a fairly passing game and getting pretty good results. Took the team to a WC where they played some excellent football and had by some way their best return on goals in any of the three WCs they played. Contrast that to a much more experienced Mick getting another quick go and the team gets to a playoff, coming in 3rd mind you and via some weird backdoor where you add the group results to the Nations League ones, carry the 1, plot the numbers on a graph and align them to the North Star and then recite the revealed incantation from Revelations.

What changed in that time? Well, Mick got older, for one. I can't say that a little bit of senility isn't creeping in, but a much more obvious and respectful guess would be that where Ireland once had Roy Keane, we now have Jeff Hendrick. Where Ireland once had Ian Harte, we now have Josh Egan. You can go up and down the line with it. The only place where the quality has arguably not slipped way down over the years is in the position of keeper, but a keeper can only do so much.

Consequently, the team has no cutting edge, and without a cutting edge, the confidence goes down and so does the morale. Results tank.

Ireland will probably get in a more defensive manager who will seek to 'right the ship'. This will probably improve results to an extent, but not to such an extent that it doesn't end in failure. Like with Trap and MoN, the call will once again go up to up to get in a manager with fresh ideas to get Ireland away from the caution and the hoofball, only for that to go nowhere, and people then want another stabiliser. You can call this the Staunton-Trap cycle because that encapsulates what I'm talking about. This cycle will not end until players of real quality come through. It's really that simple.

Those who want Stephen Kenny in charge are LOI diehards who view him as a reflection of the league. They convince themselves that Ireland are playing great football and constantly move the goalposts re what Kenny is required to do as Irish manager. They want him to remain at all costs even if we lose to San Marino and Andorra and attack anyone who questions Stephen Kenny's management. In reality, Kenny is way out of his depth as Irish manager and has been from the start. Any other manager with his record in International management would have been sacked a long time ago. He makes Steve Staunton look like a genius of a manager. The sooner the FAI end this farce the better. 

He has a break clause in his contract after the nations league in September. He will be moved on then because it'll cost them virtually nothing to do so. Jonathan Hill was well aware that Kenny was a total bluffer but gave him the rope to hang himself (a new contract with the break clause included) rather than make enemies of the majority of our clueless fanbase by sacking him after the World Cup qualifiers.

In the meantime he can relegate us from League B and ensure we are 4th seeds in the Euros qualifier, making the new managers task even harder.

I think Ukraine will batter us next week. In Poland with a full home support pretty much, they'll probably play the first team, it's gonna be the end of this pitful Kenny era. 4-0 Ukraine.

I think Knight is the new Andy Reid/Holohan btw, a decent player who does some half decent things who ends up being completely overrated by everybody until it becomes clear that they're just okay.