It&#039;s the Stephen Kenny Thread

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 3:54pm

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 4:05pm

pre Madonna wrote:

When a player is clearly far superior to the LOI, like Maguire and Towell were, and clearly capable of a higher level, they should be considered for the national team. We should not be waiting for managers in the top two tiers of English football to decide for us, our playing pool is too small. That goes for anybody else playing outside those two divisions as well.

It is part of the problem in Irish football, our fans constantly compare our players to those of our opponents, not on their abilities as a footballer, but by the league position in England of their club. Then, when they move up or down the ladder, their playing ability moves with it.

It is partly to do with our geographic location, but more to do with our mindset, that it if they haven't done it in the Championship then they are nothing. I mentioned the Croatian manager earlier, a man whose standout career moments included being sacked in Albania. Swansea City, who were long known for astute managerial appointments, before losing their way and getting relegated, hired Graham Potter for his exploits in the back arse of Sweden, exploits similar to those of Kenny.

There are plenty good managers who cut their teeth at a lower level and if we wait until they have proved themselves in England, they probably won't want us. Which is why we end up with rushed, short-term appointments that put a band-aid over far, far bigger problems in the Irish game.

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 4:28pm

What has Richie Towell done in England?

If he was "clearly far superior" to the League of Ireland, what does that say about the League of Ireland?

Personally, I'm glad the mindset exists within Irish football that "if they haven't done it in the Championship or higher, they're nothing". Because it's reflective of reality.

Just having a look at Potter's managerial record, and it's clearly better than Kenny's. He took a team from the Swedish fourth division to the top division and won the Swedish Cup. Then he actually qualified from the group stages of Europa League, finishing second on 11 points, knocking out Hertha Berlin, and only missed out on top spot to Athletic Bilbao on goal difference. A 4-2 aggregate defeat to AC Milan in the knockout stages was highly creditable.

Also, Sweden is ranked 22nd by the UEFA coefficient. The League of Ireland is ranked 37th. So it's clearly a consderably higher standard of football.

Yet Potter wasn't being touted for any international jobs. He decided he had to make it in England (Wales is England).

He's currently eighth in the Championship with a team that has just come down from the Premier League, so the jury is still out on how he does there.

It's simple. Kenny needs to manage successfully at a higher level in club football if he wants to be considered for the Ireland job in the future. If he wants it, I'm sure there would be a lower level Championship job, or a League One job, available for him.

Perhaps he doesn't want to uproot his family again, and that's fair enough. But if you really want to progress career-wise, that's what you have to do. It's a brutal business.

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:02pm

pre Madonna wrote:

When a player is clearly far superior to the LOI, like Maguire and Towell were, and clearly capable of a higher level, they should be considered for the national team.

The issue here is that how many 'superior' players move to England or Scotland and fail miserably? a lot I'd imagine.

Just look at Pat Hoban, he struggled to make the grade in League 2 and
people are jizzing their pants for him to be called in the Ireland team.

Horgan and Forresster are others too - both struggling in Scotland.

Forget the magic plane nonsense that I hear all the time.

These lads get called up after they prove themselves to be able to play at a higher level.

Edited by horsebox - 24 Nov 2018 at 5:03pm

It was far across the sea,
When the devil got a hold of me,
He wouldn't set me free,
So he kept me soul for ransom.
na na na na na na na na na
na na na na na na na na.
I'm a sailor man from Glasgow to

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:06pm

sid waddell wrote:

What has Richie Towell done in England?

If he was "clearly far superior" to the League of Ireland, what does that say about the League of Ireland?

Towell had a move that hasn't worked out, he is now back playing well at Championship level. Some moves don't work out, they are a gamble for all involved, it doesn't mean he has become a bad player because of it. I would still wager that if he was capped when he should have been, his career would have been better. It may still work out.

Personally, I'm glad the mindset exists within Irish football that "if they haven't done it in the Championship or higher, they're nothing". Because it's reflective of reality.

Which is why our football is a graveyard for ambition. That's the reality we are happy with.

As I said, his achievements are better, but the club did have a budget bigger than their rivals, much bigger than the third and fourth tiers in Sweden at the time.

Also, Sweden is ranked 22nd by the UEFA coefficient. The League of Ireland is ranked 37th. So it's clearly a consderably higher standard of football.

Which is why Kenny's achievements are comparable. You can't say on the one hand that the standard of the league is poor(I agree that it is) and then say his achievements are meagre. It's contradictory.

Yet Potter wasn't being touted for any international jobs. He decided he had to make it in England (Wales is England).

If he was Welsh, or from any other small footballing nation and achieving similar, I'm pretty sure he would have been considered.

He's currently eighth in the Championship with a team that has just come down from the Premier League, so the jury is still out on how he does there.

I wasn't talking about how he is doing now, he got thumped 4-1 today,merely saying that he got a move to a club with a history of doing due diligence on their managers, bar a few recent mistakes after changes at board level. We should be looking for similar, not necessarily Potter, Kenny or Farke, but that isn't a template we should be dismissing without even discussing it.

I find that attitude depressing. In fact, it makes me think what is the point of Irish football at all. We should just set up 'Club Ireland' and enter them in the English pyramid. There are plenty nations around our standard who have no problem picking their brightest young domestic coaches, why should we be different? Just because England is on our doorstep? That's just lazy.

Perhaps he doesn't want to uproot his family again, and that's fair enough. But if you really want to progress career-wise, that's what you have to do. It's a brutal business.

As I also said, he is on a decent contract, by all accounts, albeit heavily incentivised. There is a good chance he is taking a pragmatic financial decision and is happy with that.

I don't think he should be our manager, largely because he seems to wedded to a philosophy that doesn't suit the players we have and it might take too long to implement and it seems the suits want another band-aid and the unlikely belief we will qualify for the Euros, but Kenny should not have been dismissed so easily.

Edited by pre Madonna - 24 Nov 2018 at 5:09pm

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:16pm

horsebox wrote:

The issue here is that how many 'superior' players move to England or Scotland and fail miserably? a lot I'd imagine.

Just look at Pat Hoban, he struggled to make the grade in League 2 and
people are jizzing their pants for him to be called in the Ireland team.

Horgan and Forresster are others too - both struggling in Scotland..

Paddy McEleney is another who failed to make the grade in England at Oldham. Conor Clifford couldn't make it in England either with anyone aside from a brief run with Southend. All good enough for the LOI though which really is at League 1/League 2 standard.

Edited by grannyrule - 24 Nov 2018 at 5:19pm

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:19pm

horsebox wrote:

pre Madonna wrote:

When a player is clearly far superior to the LOI, like Maguire and Towell were, and clearly capable of a higher level, they should be considered for the national team.

But a manager should be able to see it. I am little more than a fan, but I could see Maguire was too good for Cork City .I thought the same was obvious about Stevens in League Two. I had doubts about Burke and Forrester, but it is worth noting that the latter was linked with moves to the EPL in his first season at the Pish, which goes back to players getting the right move. Luck and timing are a huge part of football.

We also dismiss the human element of moving away. These are young men moving to different parts of Britain and into places and dressing rooms in which they might struggle or thrive. We dismiss it as solely being about ability.

I did think Horgan would do better, especially as he moved into an 'Irish' dressing room at Preston, though he was unlucky with Grayson moving.

Hugh Bann is nowhere near the standard, by the way, nobody should be jizzing anything over him.

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:20pm

grannyrule wrote:

Paddy McEleney is another who failed to make the grade in England at Oldham. Conor Clifford couldn't make it in England either with anyone aside from a brief run with Southend.

And he couldn't make it in Ireland either...

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:45pm

pre Madonna wrote:

grannyrule wrote:

Paddy McEleney is another who failed to make the grade in England at Oldham. Conor Clifford couldn't make it in England either with anyone aside from a brief run with Southend.

And he couldn't make it in Ireland either...

Not entirely sure I'd agree that McEleney "failed to make it"; he never really got a chance due to Oldham being a basket case at the time he joined, and then left as they needed his wages off the bill. It's certainly hard to judge players in the LOI, but if you put the time in I think it can be done. Same goes for Kenny, I think the evidence is there to suggest that he's a fine manager,, and not just at LOI level.

We're decent enough..

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 5:57pm

pre Madonna wrote:

sid waddell wrote:

What has Richie Towell done in England?

If he was "clearly far superior" to the League of Ireland, what does that say about the League of Ireland?

Towel had a move that hasn't worked out, he is now back playing well at Championship level. Some moves don't work out, they are a gamble for all involved, it doesn't mean he has become a bad player because of it. I would still wager that if he was capped when he should have been, his career would have been better.

Personally, I'm glad the mindset exists within Irish football that "if they haven't done it in the Championship or higher, they're nothing". Because it's reflective of reality.

Which is why our football is a graveyard for ambition. That's the reality we are happy with.

As I said, his achievements are better, but the club did have a budget bigger than their rivals, much bigger than the third and fourth tiers in Sweden.

Also, Sweden is ranked 22nd by the UEFA coefficient. The League of Ireland is ranked 37th. So it's clearly a consderably higher standard of football.

Yet Potter wasn't being touted for any international jobs. He decided he had to make it in England (Wales is England).

If he was Welsh, or from any other small footballing nation and achieving similar, I'm pretty sure he would have been considered.

He's currently eighth in the Championship with a team that has just come down from the Premier League, so the jury is still out on how he does there.

I wasn't talking about he is doing now, merely saying that he got a move to a club with a history of doing due diligence on their managers, bar a few recent mistakes after changes at board level.

Perhaps he doesn't want to uproot his family again, and that's fair enough. But if you really want to progress career-wise, that's what you have to do. It's a brutal business.

As I also said, he is on a decent contract, by all accounts, albeit heavily incentivised. There is a good chance he is taking a pragmatic financial decision and is happy with that.

Have you considered the possibility that Towell's move didn't work out because he just isn't that good?

He has scored one goal for Rotherham and seven in total in England in three years. He has probably found his level now at 27 years of age and that is with a relegation struggler in the Championship. That's a higher level of football than he was playing with Dundalk, but it's on the very limit of what the Irish international team needs if it's to be any sort of force.

You say our football is a graveyard for ambition. I would say every single player in the League of Ireland (at least those under 25) has the same ambition - to get a move to England.

The League of Ireland is a feeder league. That is the limit of what it can ever be and there are various historical, geographical and cultural reasons for that. And these things are not fixable. They will never be.

There are no "big" clubs in Ireland like Celtic or Rangers which players aspire to play for. There isn't a Red Star Belgrade or a Steaua Bucharest or Dynamo Kiev or Benfica or Porto or Ajax or PSV or Feyenoord or Olympiakos or Rapid Vienna or Honved, or even an IFK Gothenburg or Rosenborg. Neither is there any prospect of there ever being one.

Association football in this country was historically always a poor relation because of our history as a country, where Gaelic Games were identified massively with the independence struggle and permeated into every townland on an organised basis.

Rugby was the game of the upper classes. Association football fell somewhere between the two and it effectively fell through the cracks.

Because there are no big clubs, the league has no real selling point for the public or focal point for good players to congregate at. Few bums on seats means little investment in anything.

Culturally in this country, sports fans have always tended to identify with place. This is seen most obviously in the GAA, but also in rugby. And you see it in association football too. We get behind the national team in a way we don't get behind club teams. The Ireland team is the Irish team we follow. It is the Ajax or Benfica of this country.

The League of Ireland clubs with the strongest support are Cork and Derry because those are the clubs with the strongest sense of place.

But I had no identfication with any of the Dublin League of Ireland clubs. Pats' were my local team, but I just never had any affinity with them, or with Rovers or Bohs or Shels. Following the Dubs was my expression of my sense of place in a sporting context.

On top of the other reasons, geography has doomed the League of Ireland to being a perpetual backwater. Corner shops can't compete with Tesco superstores.

The LOI can't compete with a much higher standard of football, higher wages, massive media coverage, on its doorstep. It can't compete with the much higher coverage given to GAA and rugby in the same country.

Take the wages problem. How do you fix that? League Two in England has a far higher average attendance and therefore better wages. TV money permeates down in England in a way it doesn't here. How do we fix that? We can't because we're a tny market. Even if LOI clubs were pulling average gates of 8-10k, and that isn't going to happen, we couldn't compete on wages.

The only thing the league can do is to try and raise the general standard of a bit so that more of its players are sold on. Get better so it can more effectively destroy itself by losing more of its best players. And that is not going to cut it.

I mean, Brazil, the spiritual home of football, a country with over 200 million people, is now nothing but a feeder league for European clubs, and players leave Brazil at the first chance they get. Crowds average about 14 or 15k. If you play in Brazil these days, you're highly unlikely to be picked for the national team. And yet, the standard in Brazilian club football is infinitely higher than Irish club football.

The belief that the League of Ireland can be anything other than a feeder league or a second chance for young Irish players who have not made it in England in their teens is so naive it's beyond words.

It's a misty-eyed belief that the laws of meritocratic sport can be turned on their head. They can't.

You're right - it is depressing for fans of the League. But it's also reality.

Kenny is a good manager, there is no doubt of that. But the League of Ireland is a third or fourth rate league. And to manage Ireland, especially without a playing background, well, sorry, but you have to prove yourself at a higher level than that first. Hes already had one chance and failed.

What Kenny has done in the League and in Dundalk's European campaign in 2016 shows he is deserving of another chance to manage at a higher level. But he has to go and take that chance first. That's where the ambition comes in. He has to have that ambition and really want it.

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 6:11pm

The O'Shea wrote:

pre Madonna wrote:

grannyrule wrote:

Paddy McEleney is another who failed to make the grade in England at Oldham. Conor Clifford couldn't make it in England either with anyone aside from a brief run with Southend.

And he couldn't make it in Ireland either...

McEleney is a lovely player. But he suffers from Paddy McCourt syndrome. He just hasn't got the drive or mentality needed to make it at the top level. Professional football is a brutal, hard slog, particularly if you end up playing catch up like McEleney did, going back to England at 25, and you have to be prepared to put the hard yards in. I'm afraid he looked for excuses too handily at Oldham and wasn't prepared enough to really put himself outside of his comfort zone.

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 6:32pm

Dan McDonnell reporting on twitter :

''Understand the picture may have changed here. Believe Kenny may have been offered a broader role - and FAI now say u21 announcement to be made tomorrow. Either way his future at Dundalk now in serious doubt.''

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 6:36pm

He would be crazy to leave Dundalk for the U21's! Is he out of his mind!?

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Posted: 24 Nov 2018 at 6:37pm

Irish examiner Tony Leen on twitter is reporting now:

BREAKING: Can confirm that Mick McCarthy is new Republic of Ireland manager and Stephen Kenny is the new Under 21 manager, but there's an intriguing sting in the tail - my understanding is Kenny takes over as senior manager after 2020 Euros. Will be confirmed Sunday at 3pm.

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