Gavin Cooney

ALL THAT COULD really be achieved against Gibraltar last night was to avoid making the whole situation any worse, and so a 3-0 win ticked that box.

Stephen Kenny said the day before last night’s game that he “fully expects” to see out his contract until the end of the Euro 2024 qualifying campaign and it is understood that his position remains secure despite the damaging 2-1 loss in Greece.

The FAI will have their monthly board meeting as scheduled next Tuesday, and it will include a review of the recent international window, as is standard. CEO Jonathan Hill will report on all aspects of the window, for which he is likely to gauge the insight and opinion of Director of Football Marc Canham. 

Opinions on Kenny’s performance as manager are likely to be voiced around the boardroom table, but at the moment it looks unlikely that it will escalate to a situation in which Kenny would be dismissed. The only scenario in which Kenny’s prospects would change would be one in which an alternative candidate was available to step straight into the role and one who the board believe would instantly improve the team’s fortunes. There are a paucity of these options. 

Some media outlets have linked former Ireland midfielder Lee Carsley to the role, but well-placed FAI sources insist the Association have not made any contact with him. Carsley is currently preparing England for the U21 Championships, which kick off in Romania and Georgia tomorrow and run until 8 July.

Carsley’s contract with the FA expires at the end of these Championships and while he is a very highly-rated coach, but there is an acknowledgement he would come with a level of risk attached given his relatively limited experience thus far as a manager.

Nobody was impressed by Ireland’s performance in Greece – one senior FAI figure called it “shocking” – but equally there remains enduring respect and recognition among some boardroom figures for the quality of the gameplan and performance against France in March.

The extent of the players’ culpability for the performance in Athens will also form part of the board room discussion next week. There is also a broad acknowledgement that the team’s inconsistency must be addressed and Kenny agrees with the latter point: he said it after last night’s victory over Gibraltar. 

Anything other than qualification for the Euros makes another contract extension unlikely, but for now a change remains unlikely.

The window’s implications for Ireland’s qualification prospects are more grave. The top two in the group will qualify for the Euros, and Ireland are third after three games, level on points with the Netherlands having played a game more. 

France are top with four wins from four, with Greece second on six points, having played the same number of games played as Ireland. The September window is daunting, with an away game against France in the Parc des Princes followed by the home game against the Netherlands three days later. 

Kenny insists Ireland can still qualify, but ambitions are expressed in a language more optimistic than ever before. 

“They are epic games, and nothing is impossible, that’s the way we feel about it”, he said after the game. “We pushed France very close and obviously it will be different in Paris, but it will be an interesting game for us and I’m very excited about the two games.”

The dreary first-half deadlock against Gibraltar was broken by Kenny’s half-time introduction of Mikey Johnston and a switch to a 4-3-3. This was the approach Kenny played at Dundalk and he used it at the start of his Ireland reign, but abandoned it after a friendly shellacking against England at the end of 2020.

Only once since – the friendly win away to Andorra in 2021 – have Ireland played a back four. He was circumspect post-game as to whether Ireland might use a 4-3-3 against any of France, Netherlands, or Greece across the rest of this campaign, hinting he had better options now to revert to that approach. 

“I’ve always liked 4-3-3 as a system, or 4-2-3-1. With the three [at the back] we have consistently scored goals here, against Scotland, Latvia, Armenia. That hasn’t been an issue. We got punished a couple of times from long range and we had to sort that out. It’s another way of playing. Mikey Johnston gives us the possibilities of that, Chiedozie Ogbene gives us possibilities in that regard as well. With Mikey, Chiedozie and Mark [Sykes] we have possibilities in that area. Initially when I took over and played that system initially, we had good players in those positions but were playing in League One at the time, which is a big jump to international football.”

While Ireland’s results hurt their own qualifying hopes, results elsewhere dealt a blow to their backdoor play-off prospects. The excellent WeGlobal Twitter account ran their numbers and gave Ireland a 50% chance of earning a play-off spot before this window, but say those chances are now down to 25%.

The play-off spots are given to the respective winners of the Nations League groups, and then to the top-ranked Nations League sides who don’t qualify. Ireland are ranked 26th in the overall Nations League standings and, so they need as many sides above them as possible to qualify automatically for the Euros.

Ireland can afford for only two sides ranked below them to qualify from their groups, so upsets in other groups are the enemy. This window has regrettably been filled with them, as Armenia shocked Wales in Cardiff and Kazakhstan edged Northern Ireland in Belfast. 

Kazakhstan, Romania, Turkey, and Armenia are all below Ireland in the Nations League rankings, and all are currently in the qualification spots in their respective groups. If three or more of them last the pace and qualify, then Ireland’s backdoor has slammed shut. 

Ireland can only control their destiny in Group B of qualifying, and the difficulty of the draw meant their grip on the reins was slack from the off. These last few days have left them with very little control at all.