Cult of Stephen Kenny

It was a spirited and confident performance with a great goal scored, in a match where not many seemed to have much hope going in. Have a bit of positivity for a change.

You can not have it as much as you want, but that was a much better performance than most of us were expecting in a game where not many were giving the team a chance. That's something to try and build on and gain confidence from.

Well, Kenny just said it himself. He was disappointed with the concession of the goal, as virtually any manager would be, but you can tell he's keen to learn from that mistake. So let's take that into the Autumn and see the team win its last two games.

Theres been no turnaround from those who want Kenny gone no matter what. He has a team playing good football and we must stick with him.

At the end of the day, Kenny's getting the support from the fans. I must say that I've found the level of support he's getting quite surprising, given that in all the time I've been following Ireland, I've become used to the knives coming out for any other manager who's gotten the results that Kenny's gotten so far. There just seems to have been an upwelling of grassroots support for Kenny in recognition of his ambition to get Ireland playing a more positive kind of football, and recognition that this won't be successful overnight or even particularly soon, so he's getting lots of time and patience.

But there are a reliable cadre of malcontents who are miffed at this and throw their toys out of the pram and just lash out with, "Well yiz are all in a cult!" They were hoping for a stick-the-knife-in party, a sacrifice to appease the footballing gods, poor craturs.

I'm expecting two horrible losses out of the gate in autumn

Then an odd win or draw to paper over the cracks.

Rinse and repeat.

Very good performance last night, Kenny does deserve credit for this as well as criticism for how we started this window.

If Ireland could find consistency (and keep all of our squad fit) we could give the qualifiers a good rattle.

We need more strength coming off the bench which carry a threat, Robinson is just so poor and Ogbene has energy but no real quality but that sums up our current set

At the back we are very strong, I know Collins got the headlines but I thought Lenihan was very good also. Both are better than Duffy for the way we want to play I feel.

I know there will always be those who will hate Kenny because of the backing he has got but how refreshing it was to see an Ireland team play football against a good side and continue to push for a winning goal instead of the last 20 years of sticking everyone behind the ball and hoping for a corner, free kick or goalkeeper assist to score a goal. Its the way forward

No

Another poster put it better than me.

They are scraping along the bottom with the odd spike like Saturday and yesterday and that lifts them off the bottom then they drop down again and continue to scrape along the bottom.

Mayo on the other hand cruise near the top but never actually reach the top, and rarely drop from their cruising altitude.

I would argue the opposite, up until Armenia the team had had 14 games with two defeats to two top class teams in Portugal and Serbia. The defeats with the seemingly weaker teams are blips that need to be ironed out, as Ireland find it hard to break them down (because we dont have the quality players who can do it against defensive teams against us) and then we get hit by amazing sucker punch goals.

I would class Mayo like Icarus but soon the wings are going fall off for good

you are taking the performance and result well i see

obafemi is a lot better than ogbene, wouldnt expect ogbene to feature a whole pile from here out tbh. unless kenny has a change of heart and plays him as a wing back. a manager "getting lucky" by starting a striker as a striker , first ive heard of it.

Kelleher/Bazunu is splitting hairs at this point, bazunu edges it but makes no difference to any of our outcomes this window IMO. Lucky? not for me.

Collins was starting anyway but his performances gives kenny the excuse to drop duffy from CCB. Collins much better central than he is out right. Lucky? possibly.

Lenihan/OShea equipped themselves well, we all knew osheas ability before this, most of our cbs are on a par tbh. Lucky? not for me.

Ogbene played himself out of contention as did Robinson. Ogbene is just not at the level technically to be used in a central position. Kenny has woken up to that now imo. Lucky? hmm not for me. He got burned and hasnt fallen back on him yet.

Biggest points against kenny this window are his insentience on 2 in the middle for 2 too many games. We always looked better with more bodies in the centre of midfield. Picking a similar team post armenia when players were fatigued/sticking with 2 in the middle overrunning our midfield. In game changes have taken him too long aswell, needs to really wake up to that. Was obvious especially 2nd half v armenia/ukraine we were struggling and hetook too long to change. Ogbene should have been whipped at ht v armenia , robinson likewise. From 20-45 v ukraine the game had slipped out of our hands, again no changes to formation/players at ht. Things to work on for sure, lets hope hes taking them on board.