The Irish Football Team Thread

Martin O'Neill and Roy Keane leave Ireland jobs by mutual agreement

The Republic of Ireland are on the search for a new manager this morning after parting company by mutual agreement with Martin O'Neill and Roy Keane.

The decision came after a meeting last night in the UK between the association chief executive John Delaney and manager O'Neill.

Coaches Steve Guppy and Seamus McDonagh have also left, with Steve Walford resigning his position previously.

O’Neill has spent the last five years in charge of Ireland along with his assistant manager Roy Keane, but endured a torrid 2018, as Ireland were relegated from the Nations League B without winning a game, and managed just one win in eleven games.

The former Celtic manager took the reins at Ireland in 2013 and led Ireland to qualification for Euro 2016 where they progressed to the knock-out phase before eventually being beaten by France.

O’Neill was rewarded with a contract extension, which was eventually signed after a lengthy delay, but he was unable to steer Ireland to the 2018 World Cup as they lost 5-1 to Denmark in a play-off.

 

Odds on with PP

 

O'Neil had to go but there's no getting away from the fact the players are just awful.

 

Surely Mick McCarthy is a pisher version of O'Neill?

Gonna be the exact same boring style under him..

Should be a more attacking approach..

Get a side like this going

Randolph

Coleman/Doherty
Duffy/Lenihan
Clark
Stevens/Ward

Rice/Hourihane
Hendrick/Liam Kelly

Brady
Grealish
McLean

Long..

Lack of attacking player's but first 11 is decent. Get a manager in who plays a more attractive style and you may get Grealish, Rice and Kelly wanting to switch back..

 

Mental how * Ireland are just now.

 

Their squad is utter rank, * knows what they have coming through but what a tough job that will be for someone.

 

.

 

You thinking of Mick the player or the manager McGuire ? When he took over last time he brought in a more attacking approach.

 

?

 

Right move but I’m sad to see him go.

I am absolutely certain that these past five years will be remembered fondly by Irish football fans in time, despite a * 12 months or so.

McCarthy was hounded out of the job having previously done really well, and the same people are calling for him back. Personally don’t think he’d be the worst appointment by any stretch but the fickleness of Irish football fans gets on my *.

There’s even people calling for Brian Kerr back, who was also hounded out of the job.

 

We are *-average at all age levels. Not really anyone to be excited about that I know of.

 

Talking more about his last few year's at Ipswich mainly..

Just doesn't strike me from that time and the football on display, that he's gonna be able to change anything..

Lenny seems like an ideal candidate from name's being mentioned..

 

May as well give it to Stephen Kenny and see what he can muster together. It's gonna take a heroic effort to make anything out of what there is at our disposal.

 

Neil lennon would be my personal preference but couldn’t see the FAI going for him.

 

He would be mine, as well, but I can't see either him or FAI going for it. Hopefully he gets the job at some point though.

 

Steal Michael

 

John Delaney is the one who really needs to go.

As for preferences of the next manager, yeah Lenny is definitely top. Of the more realistic shouts I wouldn't be against giving Mick another crack at it, he's a great motivator at least. But let's be honest we're just pure *, it's the worst group of players I've ever seen. At least for years we always had the likes of Given, Dunne, O'Shea, Duff and the two Keanes even if they were surrounded by *. Now we don't even have that. I think Coleman is our only player of genuine quality at the moment.

 

You are so so right about Delany he is the elephant in the room and he is the one who really needs to go. Changing who is in charge of the full national team is no more then rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Delany needs to go. The current management team going does nothing to change the fact that we need a root and branch change to how we develop and structure things from a development side of things. The mess we are in lies at the feet of the people in charge and Delaney is the FAI CEO. He is responsible for the fact that we no have real structure to develop our top young players and changing who is in charge of the full national team does nothing to alter that fact. The dearth of talent currently within our full national team squad is due to the almost total failure of Delany to address this fact. Unlike before the TV money boom we can not depend on the top clubs across the water to take our most talented young lads and turn them into top level pros any more. Those days are long gone and are not coming back.

Until the fundamental core issues of putting a structure in place to allow our most talented youngsters to develop properly to be able to flourish in the modern game we will continue to sink as a footballing nation and changing who is in charge of the national team won't alter that fact.
For me most fundamentally we need a full time residential fully professional programme where say our top 40 odd young players are brought in and trained in a fully professional environment so that they are fully proficient technically and comfortable on the ball by the time they are 17 and thus capable of going out and making it as full time professionals at the top level and by extension allowing our national team to have a base of players to build around constantly going forward. This will not happen over night of course but we need to face up to the facts that how the game is played has changed and we simply do little or nothing to ensure our best young talent can achieve success at the top level. Plus quite frankly the FAI's refusal to accept we do not develop players capable of playing at a high level technically and with skill and comfort on the ball means we have a national team that is flat out horrendous to watch regardless of the results and regardless of who we play.