Delaney keen for Ireland to return to football's 'middle ground' after Kenny reign

John O'Shea will name his first squad on Thursday.

Virgin Media analyst Damien Delaney. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Damien Delaney believes a return to pragmatism for the new Ireland manager is crucial to the team’s revival.

The former Ireland defender was a vocal critic of the Stephen Kenny regime but is already encouraged by the soundings from interim boss John O’Shea ahead of the upcoming friendlies against Belgium and Switzerland.

A permanent successor to Kenny – whose 40-game tenure was culled by the FAI last November – is to be unveiled early next month.

Ex-Crystal Palace and Leicester City centre-back Delaney, who won nine senior caps, feels the newcomer will eradicate some of the errors that contributed to the team slumping from 34 to 62 in Fifa’s rankings.

He branded the concession of a dozen goals from outside the box over two years as indicative of poor structure and suggested facing lower-seeded teams, which accounted mostly for Kenny’s 11 wins, may have been to “stat-pack”.

“I don’t think we ever offered enough,” he said in his overall assessment, slating the style Kenny trumpeted in mitigation for his dreadful win ratio.

“There is nothing wrong with getting crosses into the box and getting your noses two goals in front, and then you can pass the ball and then they can’t sit in their shape because they’re losing 2-0 and they’ll have to come out, and play.

“When I say we played too much football, everyone always kind of goes fully the other way and that we should play no football.

“In the argument between Giovanni Trapattoni or Stephen Kenny’s style, there is a middle ground.

“You must have some tariff on possession, but it can't be too much.

“You can't enjoy yourselves to the extent we did where people were drifting into areas and leaving gaping holes. We were so vulnerable to counterattacks.

“In the defeat to Armenia, it was 40 degrees of heat but we went out, made the pitch huge and played at a really slow tempo.” 

In that respect, Delaney has liked what’s heard so far from O’Shea – who is borrowing Delaney’s Virgin Media punditry colleague, Brian Kerr, for his caretaker spell as technical advisor.

“John is right,” he asserts. “You must look at the players you have and decide what they are good at and try to get that to the forefront as well as what they lack.

“We might end up with a little bit of everything - keeping the ball at certain times in certain areas of the pitch but equally, there is nothing wrong with going off the front.” 

O’Shea, who names his squad on Thursday for the games which begin against the Belgians on Saturday week, was part of Kenny’s backroom team for the final year.

Thus he’s not immune to culpability but he and the players have an opportunity for atonement.

“I’m sure John will have reflected too because he was part of the Stephen thing so he would have gone away and looked at what did we do?,” the Corkman noted.

“You have to accept it wasn’t a success and why wasn’t it a success? What did we do as coaches? We need to learn and rectify the mistakes.

“You can pick as many stats out of it as you want, it didn’t go well. The players will be aware of that and want to right it.

“With two good friendlies coming up, they’ll want to play better. We’re talking about getting better so we should be playing the likes of Switzerland and Belgium, rather than lower-seeded nations.”