Their keeper was out due to covid too
Youāll turn this around. I remember a time when you were Bradley Out too
#ateamofthemuns
Hard to argue with that
It seems a much happier bubble to be in.
Brian Kerr who finished fourth in a World Cup qualifying group as a second seed and has been bitching ever since about not getting a new contract afterwards thinks the FAI should hold off on awarding a new contract to Stephen Kenny who finished third in a World Cup qualification group as a third seed.
The bottom line is that the FAI know the public and the media are behind SK and he will get a new contract
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The negativity from kerr to Kenny is a bit surprising given their shared backgrounds - living in their maās box room etc. Is there some personal beef?
Iād imagine any recent Irish manager will feel quite rightly pissed off at the free pass Kenny is given by journalists when they were routinely slaughtered for less.
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Kenny has a humble bunch of players willing to commit to the project. Kerr had big time Charlies whoād rather go on the piss than watch 8 hour DVDs of Georgia and Israel.
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Itās a managerās job to get players to buy in. Spock is a bit of a weirdo but heās always very positive about his players even when we were going bad to his credit which is going to get a good reaction from them
Lads on about how other managers were given a tougher time than Kenny. Too fucking right they were. We had to listen for years how we had to play the way we played, which was utter tripe, fucking caveman stuff with no hope of any long term success, because we couldnāt play attractive possession based football because we didnāt have the players. Well, we had far better players, on paper, than we have now. Iād give Big Mick a pass because he was there for such a short term. But Trappatoni, and the lads with him like Brady, and OāNeill and Keane, should be fucking ashamed of themselves. Consistently fobbed off the quality of the players, played utter fucking tripe football,which was a closed loop. It was never going to go any further than maybe scraping qualification and eventually being outclassed on the big stage.
The way Brady and others go on, youād swear there was no bother beating these types of sides under Trap and OāNeill. For fuck sakeā¦ short memories and rose tinted glasses, we struggled hugely at times against those types of oppositions and were often shit lucky to come away with wins.
Now, under Kenny, with poorer players on paper, we are clearly improving in possession, weāre pressing better and weāre starting to create chances. It was a complete change in mindset and it took time and obviously there were some horrific displays in that time period where we were transitioning from not wanting the ball at all to a team who want to play.
I was a regular attendee at the old Lansdowne and the Aviva, right up to 2017. I couldnāt continue to justify to myself to keep going as it was pretty fucking turgid stuff to watch since about 2004 onwards. Meanwhile, we had to watch Wales and Northern Ireland, with similar players (peak Bale aside) play really attractive and good football and do well. At least now, we are not in a closed loop, if this level of improvement steadily continues and similar continues to be done with our underage sides, then we might have a chance of genuinely competing instead of going in with nothing but hope of a hape of luck, a stellar defensive performance and a headed goal from a rare corner late in the game to nick something, because thatās what we were relying on all along. There has been evidence against Portugal x2 that thatās changing a bit with much more efficient use of the ball and creation of chances as opposed to puke football and hope for the best.
Kenny In.
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I must be watching a different team to you guys.
Theyāre still a poor team to watch, an average performance against a very ordinary side last night that needed a set play goal to break them down.
The narrative is ridiculous here.
There will be some spin merchants here if they get found out next year.
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Northern Ireland were largely shite to watch over the last decade and did worse than ROI who qualified for 2 euros
Wales had far better players than ROI over that period
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The night Wales hammered us 4-1, that was a low. They played all the football that night. Was it Giggsā first game? We were cack
Started out great and place was rocking. Serious hiding by the end
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An Italian and a Northern Catholic = Supported til Death
A free stater = Will never do right by youā¦
Itās a well worn formula on here by you
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Which bracket did Mick McCarthy fall in under. Anyone who canāt recognise the embarrassing double standards from the Irish football media to Kenny compared to his predecessors is deluded beyond belief. Thatās the only thing Iāve called out here.
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I think the truth probably resides somewhere between the two narratives. I thought we were gutsy away to Portugal but were under the cosh for long periods and we did very little in terms of holding the ball or breaking them down with it with this possession based football people keep harping on about. The few chances we created all came from playing it from back to front quickly into the acres of space Portugal left. I donāt think it should be completely abandoned for a more rudimentary approach but I think people overstate itās impact.
A lot of our best play and chances against half decent teams have come from when we have won the ball back and countered at pace or turned the ball over high up the field, while we have really struggled to play out from the back when teams press us. We did get more pragmatic as the campaign went on in this regard and we were all the better for it but even last night we got ourselves hemmed in numerous times while playing these sideways balls across our defence.
I also think that Portugal are a team that are far less than the sum of their parts and people rate them as an elite international side due to their big names when they looked pretty disjointed at the 2018 WC and the Euros last summer. They looked fairly disinterested on Thursday night, but Kenny does deserve credit as Ireland were up for the game and worked hard throughout but we also had an extra man for the bones of 15 minutes against their second string yet struggled to do much with it.
Our group for Euro 2020 qualifying was a far tougher group IMHO and the form of those teams since bears that out yet we have returned to that core group of players the longer the campaign went on which makes the 9 points a very poor return in this group but the results in the second half of the group were positive. But that needs to be qualified by the fact there was nothing at stake in real terms aside from pride. Kenny should get the next nations league and Euro qualification and you would think that being in the mix to qualify automatically going into the last window and a play off appear are the minimum requirements.
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Our squad of young players look to be nearly over shock of losing Dela and this had led to an upsurge in results of late