LONG AWAITED
Kenny shows flexibility to hand striker Ireland recall
‘Manager will recognise those who play well’
STEPHEN KENNY prepares for his first match as Ireland senior manager under pressures that would not have been familiar to many of his predecessors.
And Covid-19 is only part of the reason for that.
The effects of a global pandemic will have a significant and ongoing impact on Kenny’s preparations for the match away to Bulgaria on September 3, a fortnight today, and the visit of the Finns to Dublin three days later.
There are other challenges that confront Kenny, though, and which are particular to his circumstances as a manager who has excelled mainly in the domestic league.
These challenges were given loud voice by Jason McAteer this week.
His criticism raises the broader issue of punditry and the continuing reliance by some on a generation of talking heads years removed from the workings of the game, whose main selling-point is a career long passed, and many of whom prefer well-flogged anecdotes to insight and information.
However ill-considered McAteer’s contribution, it did expose a bias that will slant some of the coverage of Kenny, and McAteer’s opinions on Brian Kerr was a reminder of how he faced the same difficulty.
Kenny’s first Ireland squad selection was interesting in a number of ways, though. There was no favouritism towards the League of Ireland or youth picked for the sake of youth, as shown in the absences of Jack Byrne and Michael Obafemi respectively.
Kenny (below) has, instead, appeared to pick a squad based on refreshing criteria: tactics and form. He detailed how he envisages his team playing, and how a player like James McCarthy might be accommodated in that.
As far as form is concerned, the recall of Shane Long is proof that Kenny will recognise players playing well.
Long will be 34 on January 22 next, and players at that stage of their career are not regarded as the future.
But it is not 2022 or 2024 qualifying campaigns that seem to have concerned Stephen Kenny with this selection. Rather, he understands the important matches coming up, in the Nations League but especially in the Euro 2020 play-off against Slovakia in October.
In a team that has been struggling desperately for goals — Ireland scored seven in their eight Euro 2020 qualifying matches, the same as Georgia, 12 fewer than Switzerland, the group winners, and 16 fewer than secondplaced Denmark — Long will bring good form, if not the promise of a scoring bonanza.
His Premier League return last season was modest, two goals in 26 appearances and with those goals coming in the space of six weeks between January and February. His total for the season was three, with an FA Cup goal, too. His goal in a defeat at home to Wolves on January 18 was the first he scored in 279 days. It was the second long wait for a goal in a year; in January 2018, he ended a 325-day wait for a goal when scoring against Crystal Palace. He is not a prolific forward; in 82 Ireland matches, he has scored 17 times, the last of which came in a World Cup qualifier against Moldova in October 2016. That, though, has quite a bit to do with his exile under Mick McCarthy. Long did not play a game under McCarthy, and hasn’t played for Ireland since 2018. Despite insistences from McCarthy that the player’s opportunities were not closed, the former manager opted to call up other players even in the event of injuries. Before the season was shut down by the coronavirus pandemic in the spring, the status of Long was becoming an issue. His good form for Southampton in the early months of 2020, and Ireland’s enormous difficulties in creating or scoring chances, were combining to present McCarthy with a big selection call.
As it turned out, it was one he didn’t have to make, as rejigged fixtures and the extraordinary succession plan drawn up by John Delaney meant McCarthy was replaced by Stephen Kenny earlier than anticipated.
And in recalling Long, Kenny made a sensible call based on short-term need but also on the important concept of rewarding form.
The same logic appears to have won James McCarthy a place back in the squad, too.
Whereas injury has hobbled McCarthy, Long was cut from a struggling squad on the basis of form. He had struggled to make the Southampton starting team at times, but the resurgence in form he enjoyed in the second part of last season was heartening.
It came, too, in a campaign when Obafemi, Aaron Connolly and Adam Idah were progressing at Premier League clubs with various degrees of success, contributing to the sense that the solution to Ireland’s forward hang-ups lay with the coming generation.
McCarthy didn’t seem convinced, as his preference for David McGoldrick illustrated.
Injury concerns about McGoldrick undoubtedly helped in the case of Long’s recall, too. McGoldrick will not be fit for the Bulgaria game and was included in the squad with the Finland game in mind, but that is contingent on the assessment of a foot injury.
His absence in Bulgaria may still not be enough to get Long a game, given the way Kenny spoke of Idah’s talents. But a veteran of 12 Premier League seasons provides Kenny with a safer but also proven option.
Long’s dozen seasons in Europe’s toughest league has seen him make 320 appearances for Southampton, Hull, West Bromwich Albion and Reading, scoring 55 goals. His 10 goals in the 2015/16 season for Southampton constitute the highest total he has ever amassed in a Premier League season, but judging a player with his style on goals alone gives an unbalanced take on his strengths.
Pace has been critical to his game, as well as a capacity for the endurance work that has become a part of a forward’s game.
And that is what makes him well suited to Southampton’s game under Ralph Hasenhuttl.
The club’s season looked doomed when they were humiliated 9-0, at home, by Leicester in October. They thrived thereafter, though, with Hasenhuttl rich in praising Long’s role.
‘He’s an unbelievable wall player for us, and that gives you another chance to keep heaping pressure on the opponent,’ said Hasenhuttl in January.
‘He’s very strong in the aerial duels and that can squeeze opponents.
‘What I like, too, is he knows exactly when to go and when to stop, because this is sometimes not so easy for a player.
‘It is all this kind of work that makes him so important for us.’
The news, then, in June that Long signed a two-year extension to his contract at the club did not cause much shock.
It was notable nonetheless that a Premier League club would reward a 33 year old in that way, given the increasing trend in English football’s top flight to limit players over the age of 30 to one-year agreements.
‘Shane is an outstanding professional,’ his manager said then. ‘He has been an important player for me and I know also for the managers before me.’
He has played under three Ireland manager so far, having debuted under Stephen Staunton in February 2007, and thriving under Giovanni Trapattoni and Martin O’Neill thereafter.
His chances of doing so under a fourth looked gone, but that’s no longer the case.
Kenny’s pragmatism and Long’s excellent form have combined in a most unexpected manner.