Former Republic of Ireland defender Gary Breen joined OTB AM to discuss Stephen Kenny's first two games as senior international manager.
Ireland followed up a 1-1 draw against Bulgaria in Sofia on Thursday with a 1-0 defeat to Finland on Sunday evening in Dublin.
Failing to get a win in his first two games was hardly the ideal start for Stephen Kenny and he will surely be feeling the pressure going into next month's crunch playoff game against Slovakia.
"We always knew we couldn’t change everything overnight," Kenny said after the Finland defeat.
Breen saw these comments and feels that Stephen Kenny "can't really have it both ways."
"It’s all well and good for him saying that he knew it wasn’t going to change overnight. But he was quite bullish in saying what was going to happen."
The former defender was asked when will be a fair time to judge the impact that Stephen Kenny has made on the squad.
"I think we’ve got to analyse it all the time," he replied.
"We will be judging the team all the time, that’s the nature of this job. No one is going to say that they’ve got a year to do what you want and we won’t be analysing it.That’s just unrealistic.
"We need to see an impact relatively quickly."
Breen did however acknowledge that some time is needed and there were some exceptional circumstances around these two games.
"This was never going to be a quick fix. We are experienced enough to know that it does take time," he said.
"You also probably want to look and judge it a bit better when the players are fully fit. To play an international game before you’ve played any club games is incredible but we’re living in incredible times."
Kenny Cunningham also featured on OTB AM and he cautioned against the idea that greater match fitness will solve Ireland's problems.
"We’re kidding ourselves a little bit if we think that if all the lads get six games under their belt, all the problems will disappear," he explained.
"The problems are more fundamental. They’re kind of tactical issues, in terms of how high the defensive line is, the distances between fullbacks and centre-halves. Those are very little to do with fitness levels, they are more to do with decision making."
"The problems are not going to disappear so it’s important that the coaching staff recognise that and I’m sure they will."
Cunningham explained though that he does not have a "negative mindset because the problems that we have are pretty clear and they can actually be rectified pretty easily."
"If we can get the defensive structure of the team right for that Slovakia game, I can easily envisage a situation where we can go and win that game."
Ireland meet Slovakia in Bratislava on October 8th and a victory would see them progress into a playoff final where they would play either Northern Ireland or Bosnia and Herzegovina in November.
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