Cult of Stephen Kenny

Yes and what's especially damming is that it's easier now than ever to qualify for major tournaments. 24 teams qualify for the Euros. That's a huge amount. A basic requirement should be at least getting to the playoffs. It really shows how far we've fallen under Kenny. I think we're going to be around 56th in the World after the latest rankings are released. He took over when we were 34th.

I was at that game, they hit the post a number of times too. It was a very common sight to see "lesser" opposition come to the aviva and dictate play under them. Matt Doherty blasted the coaching set up in those days.

Georgia dominated possession in both games.

That's a very poor list. Back to the future with that.

Some of it was poor and when he lost the dressing room it was horrendous. The thing is, Kenny is only comparable to when O'Neill lost the dressing room. Under O'Neill we had some great results and performances. Beating Germany, Italy and Austria away being the highlights. And the performance against France at the Euros was excellent. We'd kill to go back to that level now.

I'm laughing at all the "Anthony Barry was a football genius" posts! Come on, no one mentioned him back when decisions had to be made. If we're going for 20/20 hindsight stuff, can I add that we should have gone all out to get Kane, Phillips, Rice and Grealish so that's where we really failed?

Kenny was out of his depth form day one, His tenure has been an absolute joke ,

Endless strawman arguments! It really shows how weak your argument is. Anthony Barry is a very good coach, we're not sure of him as a manager obviously but compare Ireland under Kenny prior to when Barry came in to what happened after. It wasn't perfect but an improvement on where we were. Remember, before Barry came on board, we hadn't won a match under Kenny and only scored 1 goal!

It was very noticeable that we suddenly started playing well once Barry joined the team and the results went downhill as soon as he left (definite hints that Kenny was / is the weak link in the chain).

On the other hand, look at Scotland. They were in a mess under Alex McLeish. Nowhere near qualification. Steve Clarke comes in and completely turns things around. Look at then now, qualifying automatically for a major tournament. It shows what a decent manager can do. Steve Clarke has been in charge for a similar spell to Kenny. We've gone in opposite directions.

3rd place gets you a playoff though.

I'd firmly expect a new manager to get better results based on football logic rather than luck. They won't turn us into world beaters but i'd fully expect them to get us competitive again the likes of Greece and Serbia. I'd fully expect them to beat Luxembourg twice and Azerbaijan and Armenia twice.

I think Scotland have better players but we're actually not that bad! Collins, Egan, O'Shea, Cullen, Ogbene, Ferguson are all Premier League players with Bazunu being there recently, Coleman and Doherty still hanging around. Omobamidele got a premier League move. Then others are upper championship players with a good opportunity to get into the Premier League. Molumby, Knight, Obefami, Smallbone, Connolly. And there are other players getting close to a breakthrough. And a few playing around Europe.

The word seems to be that Carsley will be approached. Would be worth a go I suppose but still a risk. Still, it's not the poisoned chalice that some would want us to believe. It may be possible that we just had an awful manager.

This is the negative attitude that has come from Kenny's reign. People used to talk about managers running down our players and it was their fault for not getting the best out of them. Now it's the opposite. These are good players we have. Our squad is much stronger than painted. Players have ups and downs in form but we have enough to be competing for qualification. Right now we're competing to not come bottom.

The difference in our list and the Scotland list is a lot of their top players are in Midfield and are experienced premiership pros. How many times do we pass it sideways or backwards and then it goes forward and comes straight back because our midfielders are in general athletic workers not passers and definitely not scorers. McTominay and McGinn both have a goal in them especially at international level. Gilmour looks like the exact type of midfielder we need to knit everything together. Add to that Tierney and Robertson who are similar to Coleman and Doherty were maybe 4 years ago. The key with a lot of our players is they are only starting their careers and not many are established at club level as definite starters every week and certainly not in premier league teams with no chance of being relegated like Gilmour and McGinn (McT is obviously a squad player for United but has started a lot of games for them).

I had a lot of time for Kenny but feel he is finished now and definitely doesn't help himself with his terrible interviews and poor game management at times but the average age of the list of Irish players you have above is probably 23 which is extremely young especially at international level. There was no way around having to have a few years of giving these players experience unless you wanted to stick with the likes of Hendrick, Randolph, Hogan, James Collins etc

It's true to an extent. Trap and MON were slated for playing a certain way and pointing out that they didn't think they had the players available to them to out football Germany or Italy or the bigger teams.

Now LOI Boy is in charge it's all the players fault. They aren't there are Kenny is doing the best anyone would with a poor group. Which isn't true.

The question has to be asked, how did Kenny manage to get a new contract after the World Cup qualifying disaster?