Martin O'Neill...

Link?

Young players looking for more tactical input but not getting it etc. 

“It’s right up there with everything I did. But I never won over the media. I don’t know why, but I said in my book I was made to feel like an outsider. I was called the Ulsterman, I’ve tried to explain this… just recently I heard an Irish commentator saying we have had outsiders as managers, we had [Giovanni] Trapattoni and we had O’Neill.

“I’m definitely an Irishman. I’ve always considered myself an Irishman. No doubt about that. It does hurt me, of course it does. Deep down, at the end of it all, I honestly felt, from pretty early on, they were almost looking for the team to lose so they could have a go at me.

“I think they have started to realise the job is a lot more difficult than they thought it was. They had an experiment with a manager (Stephen Kenny) that didn’t work, whatever they say, it didn’t work.

“They couldn’t win football matches. It was all about this new style of play and here is the point, you are not a club manager, you don’t have these players every single day. The most important message which I think Irish football now realises is you cannot devise an elaborate style of play with the time you have with those players.

“Your job is to win football matches and try and qualify for competitions. The Republic of Ireland don’t qualify for these tournaments too often, which is why it was so sublime when we did. You have to find a way knowing that, even at home, you are playing teams who are probably going to have more of the ball then you.

“They haven’t been near a play-off game for years now. We lost a play-off game. I can’t say we got to Russia, so fine... the experiment after I left hasn’t worked, nobody can argue otherwise.”