Republic of Ireland Team 2023/24 [old thread]

And that's exactly why he's even a remote possibility for Ireland. Every single one of these older managers linked with the job have had some absolutely turgid putrid performances with clubs. If they hadn't, they'd not be within a million miles of Ireland. He's well past the peak of his powers, but I'd have him in a second over lads like Hughton or Warnock or Bruce.

But as I said, I'd personally rather go the other promising-but-unproven route with someone like McKenna if that was at all possible.

To be honest, I think McKenna has actually done too much - I think he's probably out of our league now. And it's ridiculously harsh to be putting blame on an assistant coach for what happened under Mourinho at a basket case United.

He's got loads of experience developing youth players at Spurs and Man Utd, and has gone on to do brilliant stuff with Ipswich, dragging them up to promotion contention in League One in his first season, before comfortably being automatically promoted in his second to the Championship, going 19 games unbeaten in a row in the process. And now he's somehow got them pushing hard for automatic promotion to the Premiership, sitting comfortably in second place. We'd be really lucky to get him at this stage imo.

Rafa is having a poor season with Celta, he'll probably be free for work in the next couple of months.

I’d bite your hand off for Rafa based on the current names going around.

Every older manager linked with the Ireland job will have a chunk of club football that can be criticised but he’s the most successful out of all the other names. They loved him at Newcastle too.

Honestly don’t think it’s a realistic option but he’d be miles ahead of Lennon, Bruce, Allardyce, Keane etc.

Or weeks. He won’t probably be the next manager but lads who just will never get the job like keane are way ahead in the betting.

I'd love Hassenhuttl, but I'd say we've no chance with him. Think the only reason he's not in a job is that he doesn't want to be - at worst he's a top half championship level manager, and could well get a Prem job if he was interested. But he's long talked about wanting to retire by 2024. That gives us some little chance of coaxing him out for the part time aspect of international management, but i'd say if he wanted an international job he'd be looking higher than us - could maybe see him take over his own Austria after Ragnick leaves post-Euros.

What's the craic with Eustace actually, any word on what was really behind his sacking at Birmingham, since he was doing alright? They've since plummeted under Rooney.

Oof, not looking a great call now... from 6th down to 16th in less than 2 months since then.

Pretty much anyone would be levels about Kenny. Benitez, in my eyes, would be the same as Bruce, Keane etc in that football has passed them by. Benitez seems to get a bye because he’s foreign.

There are very few managers in world football who have never made a mistake on a player evaluation or never been fired from a job.

Focusing in on the failures or experience gaps of candidates willing to take the Ireland job is a foolish endeavour. You can weave a strong narrative against ANY of the candidates mentioned to date.

Benitez is hugely tactical and has been successful at the highest levels of the game. He has had bad jobs, but also good jobs where players and fans regarded him very warmly. In terms of where we are today, Benitez is a manager who we could expect to come in and assess our playing pool diligently before formulating a tactical approach that plays to our strengths.

Hyper focusing on a single decision from a long career doesn't make sense to me.

Don't remember Steve Bruce or Roy Keane winning European and UEFA Cups and finishing in the top four of the Premier League multiple times.

We can't just tar managers with experience as 'has beens' and managers without many failures as 'exciting'. There are levels and nuance to all of this.

The thing Benitez was excellent at was winning ties in European competition. That expertise in tactical preparation for once off ties against often superior opponents is a quality we could really use. This contrasts with Keane for example, who doesn't appear particularly tactical in his thinking and would be a big knock on his candidacy.

Trapp is considered to be one of the greatest managers of all time. He won it all at Juve and dominated Seria A for years in a row when it was the top league in the world. It was just a couple of decades in the past when he landed with us.

Most things in Irish football don’t surprise me but some occasionally still do

Probably not

I’d imagine it’s a man who’s played a few rounds of golf with Brucey but I don’t know who.

He was about 15 years ago, how’s he getting on now? Failed at Real Madrid, Newcastle, Everton, in China and at Celta.

That was one of many problems

Kenny was very very badly found out in terms of ingame tactical adjustments against Greece and Holland. But never settled on a team; never established consistency of performance; never seemed to be maximising our strengths / minimising weaknesses.

Additionally he was poor in media appearances (although the media were as kind as they could possibly have been).

Bruce can do an awful lot better across the board here.

Qualification is the target for all international teams. That’s the whole point of qualifiers. With the current crop we should be aiming for they via Nations League or playoff.

• Falling short on qualifying but bringing it down to the last round of fixtures
• Losing a playoff
• Winning games in the Nations League

It’s not qualification or bust right now, we are in a completely terrible position after being taken backwards as a football nation during the Kenny reign, and everyone knows this.

But it’s about winning games and getting results. We’ve had years of skirting around those core objectives and it needs to stop now.

In the sense that our world ranking is lower, our seeding is lower, we have lost hope of being able to get near qualifying for things and our competitive results have been horrendous through four successive competitive campaigns.

You seem to uniquely think Kenny’s reign was not a disaster? How have you reached such a conclusion?