IT’S A RESULTS BUSINESS NOW
Ireland’s biggest problem is inconsistency and Stephen Kenny needs to solve it – that’s his job
RESULTS have become an acutely sensitive topic in discussion of the national team. It feels at times like conversations about Stephen Kenny’s side have taken on the tenor of a family desperately talking about anything but the serious illness that has befallen one of their number.
The weather, the budget, the state of the country, the state of the garden: any topic will be ransacked for every last sentence, if the alternative is having to engage with the grim, overwhelming reality squatting over everything else.
Eventually, that truth needs tackling.
And so, after years in which various tactics were deployed to protect Kenny from the reality that results actually matter in sport, his time managing the national team will finally be determined by the outcome of important games.
After Ireland catastrophically lost to Luxembourg in March 2021, there was a desperate but inexplicably persistent argument from his champions that asked to know why Ireland thought they could beat Luxembourg.
This was despite the fact Luxembourg were ranked 98th in the world on the day of the game, 56 places below Ireland and, presuming these rankings matter at all, they could lead people to expect to beat the minnows in Dublin.
Seamus Coleman described the defeat as ‘a horrible and embarrassing night’, so he was among the entitled, deluded mob who had the temerity to expect an Irish victory on that occasion.
Echoes of that daft defence could be heard sporadically in recent days, after the near-disastrous game against Armenia on Tuesday night.
Ireland have no entitlement to assuming they should beat such an opponent, apparently.
This is Armenia (92nd in the world) who looked uninspired and uninterested with half an hour to play against Ireland (47th in the world), and who have never qualified for a major tournament.
If they are frightening Ireland, as they did in Dublin, or beating them, as they did in Yerevan last June, maybe the reason is not that they are peers of Ireland, locked in battle with a foe of similar strength.
Maybe it’s because Ireland have issues.
Well of course Ireland have issues, runs the counter case, and Stephen Kenny is engaged in intensive therapy trying to fix them. He is reordering expectations from his players, implementing a game based on keeping possession which does constitute quite the departure from how the game was played under many of his predecessors.
The treatment programme designed by Kenny is not at issue, but the erratic manner in which the players are responding has to draw scrutiny on the manager.
Stephen Kenny is not the only manager in the world capable of coaching a progressive style, and the extent to which his advocates have tied him personally to the need to overhaul the Irish style of play can suggest otherwise.
Inconsistency remains the outstanding problem after two years under Kenny, a malady increasingly rooted in a weak midfield.
Correcting that is complicated by the availability of players, and the suspension of Josh Cullen was a potential difficulty against Armenia offset by a good first half from Jayson Molumby.
His sloppy indiscipline should have seen him sent off, and the manager made the right decision in replacing him before he was shown a red card.
It is possible to feel sympathy for a manager in those circumstances, just as it was not Kenny but Conor Hourihane who played a calamitous pass that gave the ball to Armenia for their equaliser.
But it is also possible to contend that it is up to him to counter these challenges.
That’s the point of the job.
Selecting Jeff Hendrick when his best days seem passed did not help the balance of midfield, after all, and if, as he unconvincingly insisted, Ireland’s vulnerability came from efforts to chase a third goal, then a message to play a more cautious style, accompanied by a conservative replacement or two, could have addressed that.
Trying to micro-manage the deficiencies in the Armenia performance is of limited usefulness, however, because soon enough there will be another problem.
Now this can be blamed on the modestly talented players at his disposal (and that argument has been put forward on his behalf again since Tuesday), but if they are that ordinary, then they should not be trusted with too ambitious a plan.
This all comes down to the manager in the end. It’s how it works.
There is no indication that Kenny has any problem with that, it should be said, and he will remain fully committed to his preferred tactical alignment, as is his right.
But his Ireland future will be determined by how the qualifying effort for Euro 2024 goes. And if Ireland’s interest is over early, and there are meaningless matches clogging up the concluding rounds of the team’s schedule, then Kenny’s case to remain is threadbare.
He needs his team to be competitive against the top seeds in the group, and to win at home against the rest of the opposition.
They are reasonable baseline requirements.
Yet they could be hellishly difficult to achieve, precisely because of the inconsistency.
The best run the team has enjoyed under Kenny extended to eight matches, starting with the grim 1-1 draw at home to Azerbaijan in September 2021, up to a 1-0 friendly win against Lithuania in March this year. That run included draws in Dublin with Serbia and Belgium (the latter, like the win over Lithuania, coming in a friendly), and a 3-0 win away to Luxembourg.
In fact, the encouraging run could
Kenny isn’t the only manager who can coach in a progressive style
extend back a further four games, including the commendable 2-1 loss to Portugal in the Algarve.
Yet that sequence also included draws with Qatar and Hungary, and a big win over Andorra.
Then, in the June window this year, came the dismal loss to away to Armenia, the jumbled mess that constituted much of the home defeat to Ukraine, before the rousing win against Scotland and the brave draw in Lodz against the Ukrainians.
Run a finger through all those games and there are only the sporadic makings of a form-line
This is, to an extent, the lot of the ordinary team.
Even against minnows, matches can be hard-won.
But cannier tactics can help, and staying beholden to a grand vision when the available resources suggest a more measured system would help, is not good management.
Kenny has to find a new coach before next March, too. Initial suggestions that John Eustace would have been replaced for the window just gone did not materialise, and having a new face involved for next month’s friendly games makes sense.
The manager seems to trust his existing staff fully, as he should, but different ideas are crucial, with this again exacerbated by the shallow playing pool; if good players are scarce, then every other conceivable advantage should be pursued.
And Anthony Barry’s set-piece work showed how a smart coach given his freedom can work to this end.
There must be a case, too, for picking players who have done well for the manager and within his methods, irrespective of their club fate.
Sticking with Gavin Bazunu (allowing for his very significant wobbles on Tuesday), Nathan Collins, Dara O’Shea, Cullen, Jason Knight and Michael Obafemi is sensible. Kenny can trust them, they are thriving in his side, and they can do so, once fit, even if some of them have fallen out of their club selection.
He needs an unchanging framework within which the remaining places can be interchangeable.
But there aren’t enough quality performers to make every place a selection lottery. What Stephen Kenny needs to do most of all is leave as little as possible to chance come the qualifiers next spring.
All conceivable twists and turns should be anticipated and alternatives put in place.
Even then, Ireland will be vulnerable. It’s the lot of the small team.
But it’s the job of the manager of such teams to work accordingly.
The Kenny era has now shrunk down to one immovable truth: results.
If players are ordinary, they should not be trusted with an ambitious plan