Former Ireland international defender Damien Delaney was heavily critical of Stephen Kenny's tactical outlook in Saturday night's defeat to Luxembourg.
On a disastrous night for the former Dundalk boss, Damien Delaney insisted that another manager could have gotten a better performance out of the players selected on Saturday evening.
Assessing the performance of Ireland and how they were set up tactically for the game against Luxembourg, the former Irish international believes Kenny got it wrong.
"First of all, I don't like 3-5-2," he declared on Virgin Media Sport, "I've never liked it.
"It is a possession-based system and you have to maintain a large chunk of the ball because when you don't have the ball you're very susceptible in a 3-5-2.
"Unless you revert quickly to five at the back you can get opened up and that's why Luxembourg had a lot of joy against us tonight."
Crucially, the former Premier League defender Delaney argued that Kenny was expecting too much of his centre-halves given how he instructed other players to play.
"Stephen clearly asked his wing backs to stay high and the centre-backs become exposed," he reasoned. "If you're not having 75, 80% of the ball in that system you get run ragged.
"We were playing Luxembourg! We have enough players to put on a better showing than that. My God, we should compete better against Luxembourg.
"They got their tactics better than us by miles, way, way better than us."
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You can watch Damien Delaney speaking about the Republic of Ireland's defeat to Luxembourg below.
"We're playing Luxembourg! We have enough good players to put on a better showing than that! I'm not saying if we were playing Portugal we should out play them, but my god, we should compete better against Luxembourg!"
- Damien Delaney.#COYBIG #IRLLUX #WCQ pic.twitter.com/qi1x6X4kOm— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) March 27, 2021
Tune into OTB Sports from 1:00 pm on Sunday for even more reaction to Ireland's shock defeat against Luxembourg.
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