Would anyone else do any better than Stephen Kenny?
Yes, says Alan Smith.
Manager looked a broken man after defeat
When the final whistle went on Sunday night and the last hope of Ireland reaching next summer’s European Championship was extinguished, Stephen Kenny looked like a broken man.
In his technical area he stood almost frozen for a moment, the inevitability of his fate beginning to sink in. A little later, in front of the TV cameras, he appeared like a rabbit in headlights – shell-shocked by a fourth defeat in five and another match in which his deficiencies were placed under a microscope.
This was the body language of a man who was slowly beginning to accept that his time in charge has run its course. A limit has been reached and, really, those repeated references to transition and potential have become irritating and tiresome.
The question has become not whether he should be allowed to continue his project but whether he should be replaced immediately or at the end of another campaign that was over before it began.
Already the names of potential successors are forming and there are some intriguing names who would be worth getting excited about: from Lee Carsley, who considered the Under-21 job in 2018 before Kenny took it and has since gone on to do some fine work at that grade with England, to flavour of the month Kieran McKenna, the Fermanagh man who has worked wonders at Ipswich Town.
Only the FAI’s key suits know what the succession plan exactly looks like but the English FA are already bracing for Carsley to receive an offer that they will likely provide resistance to despite him being on a one-year rolling contract.
But he, along with the less attainable McKenna, are both progressive types who are proven when it comes to developing young players on top
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