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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Robert Hynes

Stephen Kenny's post-match comments rubbished by Damien Delaney who insists 'there are other managers that can get Ireland playing football'

Damien Delaney once again took aim at Stephen Kenny following Ireland's narrow escape against Armenia.

Kenny insisted that lessons would be learned following the Irish implosion that saw the visitors score two goals in two minutes before a Robbie Brady penalty rescued a late win.

But Delaney said the Ireland manager's comments sounded all too familiar and insisted that it was not a good performance from the Boys in Green.

READ MORE: Richard Dunne takes aim at Stephen Kenny as he says Ireland record 'isn't good enough'

The former Ireland defender told Virgin Media: "How many lessons have we learned? Stephen said afterwards 'it's just one of those things'. It's not just one of those things.

"When you look at his track record for the last two years, there's been several of those things. You can say quite easily lessons learned but when are they going to start learning them? When are we going to start winning games that we should win? I know we won tonight but I'm talking about the Scotland game.

"Tonight, (Ireland) should have just seen that out comfortably 2-0, 3-0. We had a whole package of clips of good Ireland play but Stephen saying it's a good performance... a performance is over 95 minutes when you take in injury-time. You can't just chop it off at 70 and restart it again at 80 and say well it was a good performance. Ten minutes is in the game. You don't just get to forget about that. That's part of the performance."

Delaney insisted these are now "seriously worrying times" for the national team and believes there are plenty of other managers that could come in and get Ireland playing an attractive brand of football.

He added: “This is a team that have three wins in 20 competitive games.

“They were in the box-seat, but their discipline and concentration went out the window.

“I mean.. Stephen Kenny doesn’t hold a patent on an Irish team playing football. There seems to be a theory out there that if we get rid of Stephen Kenny we will end up with a Sam Allardyce, and think ‘we had a go at this and we can’t go any further’.

“There are other managers that can come in and get Ireland playing football. Nothing is to be celebrated after that tonight. That is the the biggest get out of jail free card we have ever got.

“That was shambolic, how we gave up a position of superiority with the ease that we gave it up. I’m flabbergasted that was even a discussion.

“We are talking about progress and getting results, but we got one tonight by the skin of our teeth against a team ranked 92nd in the world.. Seriously worrying times.”

Keith Treacy was also on punditry duty for Virgin Media and disagreed with Kenny's post-match comments after the manager described his side's implosion as "a few minutes of madness".

The former Blackburn Rovers and Burnley player said: "I don't think it was a very good performance. I think it was an okay performance against a very weak Armenian team. We gave them a way back into the game. We managed to somehow win a penalty and wrestle it back right at the end, but it's just not good enough.

"He's saying we got caught on the counterattack for the first goal. It wasn't a counterattack. Conor Hourihane crosses the ball, the keeper has it in his hands for five or six seconds, then throws the ball into midfield and you just see our midfielders really struggling to get back.

"It wasn't the workload that they were getting through because we had the lions share of possession. I didn't expect Ireland to dominate for 90 minutes. Although Armenia aren't a great team, they're going to have a little period in the game (where they have possession).

"The alarming thing for me is that they were on top for probably five-ten minutes in the game and we couldn't ride it out. We couldn't ride it out whatsoever. We were on the ropes, nervous, we couldn't string passes together for that ten-minute period."

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