Cult of Stephen Kenny

Regarding contrasts of style under MON, Mick and SK.....I suggest you look at the word "results".

Ah I see. The results aren't applicable to Stephen.

What I'm saying is the style between those 3 doesn't matter a **** if the results are forthcoming.

Remember the game in Georgia where we somehow scraped a 1-1 in 2017? That was MONROY at its very worst. Georgia were pinging the ball around like Spain 2008, it was embarrassing. That was the last straw for me with those two and even this SK era has never had me so pissed off.

You come across as having a personal dislike of the man. We've probably never had a manager more invested in the team than SK. Yes he's awful at media but the players seem to like him and we don't know what he's like in training or in the dressing room.

Yeah and us losing to Greece away. The one game where we needed a result and again for the third group in a row couldn't get it. I can't see us getting near a playoff unfortunately.

I do think this team are capable of getting a win again Greece at home and if the group is tied up by the time we play the dutch away then no reason why we can't upset them. Strangers things have happened in football.

I mean if we had had Fergie the other night we could have scored a few and hung on for a win. SK has been desperately unlucky too. Hopefully this Andrew Moran fella amounts to something, scored a cracker for the U21s last week.

Did you watch any of Kenny's first Nations League campaign? The Wales 0-0, 2 games against Bulgaria, 2 games v Finland. They were all horrible to watch. Then we had Luxembourg, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine. It's one of the myths that follow Kenny, that somehow we were entertaining to watch. Even the most recent games. We were all out defence, played some long balls, looked to score from set pieces and in the end threw Duffy up front! The very things previous managers got criticised heavily for.

Personally I can't wait to watch the next manager with 10 behind the ball lashing it long in Evan Fergusons general direction hoping he does something miraculous with it. It's gonna be great

That says it all. We just don't have enough players anywhere near the standard required to be challenging the 2 best teams in any group.

Greece, Armenia, Luxembourg, Azerbaijan and even Serbia. These are the results that has marked Kennys card. Not defeats to France or Holland or Portugal.

Whilst losing to Greece or Serbia is no shock you just need to pick up at least one win against them at home and possibly away to qualify.

So hoofball is acceptable under Kenny but not previous managers?

As I've said I think its now probably time to get rid of Kenny but we really needed a few years to blood players and let results come second. I know international football is a results business and now is probably the time for them to be priority again but as has been flagged so many times there was an 8 year period where the only player that came through our U21 team was Alan Browne. That is absolutely shocking. Football in Ireland is a mess due to under investment. When we lost to Armenia that time there was an article showing the investment on Football there compared to here and it was actually embarrassing.

The main thing I take out of this whole SK affair is this - who the f**k do we think we are? Did we expect to qualify for this tournament despite but not limited to:

1) Only qualifying for 6 tournaments in our history with 3 of them before 1995

2) Depending on the English system and clubs to develop our young players for the entirety of our existence (only changing now because of Brexit) with an embarrassingly underfunded national league and infrastructure. The growth of the premier league to a worldwide game means Irish youngsters are competing with the whole world to make it at premier league clubs or as footballers in general.

3) Having a small population with two national sports as well as rugby amongst others to take from the potential playing population.

4) Most importantly - being drawn in a group with France and Netherlands. That was the end of our hopes before any ball was kicked. France are the best team in the world and Netherlands have an array of higher end champions league players.

If you showed all of the facts including investment, history and competing sports to someone with no knowledge of the country and they would say we are exactly where we should be down around 3rd/4th in groups and a lower League B/ upper League C Nations League team.

Full Stephen Kenny excuse bingo. Why were previous managers not excused for that list above? Kenny has been blessed with a large list of young players emerging. The squad really isn't as bad as Kenny supporters want to paint. We have 6 or 7 premier League players! And Kenny isn't competing with the top teams in any of our Nation's League or qualification groups. He's been competing to come third or avoid coming bottom.

I think I heard PEAK cult of Stephen Kenny when I heard Shane Coleman on Newstalk complaining that whilst Martin O'Neill got us to Euro2016 he only finished third in the group.

Well we hired Anthony Barry as assistant so I'm sure we could have got him. A bit of thinking outside the box, there are some good young managers in England and across Europe who play good football and are affordable. Also, qualifying for major tournaments would be massive financially for the FAI. Paying that but more to get a decent manager is a worthwhile investment. What do they say about paying peanuts?