Surprise, surprise. It turns out that there wasn’t that much coaching going on under the most recent Republic of Ireland management set-up.
The Football Association of Ireland is on the hunt for a new manager after Martin O’Neill left his post following talks with the FAI on Wednesday morning.
Assistant manager Roy Keane, goalkeeping coach Seamus McDonagh and assistant coach Steve Guppy also parted ways with the association after a dreadful Uefa Nations League campaign which saw Ireland relegated to Group C.
Ireland failed to find the net in each of their last four games, their worst run in front of goal in 22 years and a spotlight is now being shone on O’Neill’s Ireland and where it all went wrong.
Wolves full-back Matt Doherty has shed some light on what it was like to prepare for matches under O’Neill and it makes for concerning reading.
Doherty, who featured just four times for O’Neill, has claimed that there were occasions when the players didn’t even know how they were lining up going into games.
“Everyone thinks there wasn’t a game plan every time, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes there was, sometimes it was less clear,” Doherty said on 2FM’s Game On.
“Compared to the set-up I have at Wolves, you could class it as old-school. When you were away with Ireland, you didn’t really have that much coaching. It was more of five-a-side, or 11-a-side game, and that would be it.
“The day before a game you would do a few set-pieces here and there and then go into the game. You are kind of thinking to yourself, ‘what shape are we going to play?’
“You’d have a few players thinking ‘we’ll play this shape’, or someone else thinking something else. You can’t have that, especially at international football, people not really sure on what their role is the next day.
“It is bizarre, but like I said, it didn’t happen all the time. There were odd occasions when it did happen.”
