Former Republic of Ireland striker Kevin Doyle joined The Football Show to discuss Stephen Kenny's first week, and why he feels the manager is subtly improving the confidence of the squad.
Doyle spoke of his own experiences under Steve Staunton and Giovanni Trappatoni, where he heard references to Ireland's limitations and how this undermined the self-esteem of the squad.
What he has heard so far from Stephen Kenny has impressed the Wexford man.
Stephen Kenny
"I don't think that we are going to see a massive difference in the few days that he has had them. He is dead right in what he's saying - all theses player do this week-in, week-out with changes of managers, changes of formations.
"The way he is not playing is not radical, it is nothing massively different. It will be different to what we have seen with Ireland in the last few years, but it is nothing too difficult for them.
"What I like moreso about Stephen is the way he is subtly talking up the players a bit more than we have been used to, even all the way back to Trappatoni. Deep down, a lot of the managers [in the past] didn't think that we were as good as the teams that we were playing.
"We kept hearing 'we don't have the players' and 'we are doing the best with the players that we have' - I don't think that we're going to hear that from Stephen. This is the best bunch of players that he will have managed.
"This may be the biggest game of his career, whereas for some of the managers through the years this wouldn't have been. So he is looking at it from that point of view, and that is a positive."
Confidence
From a player's perspective, Doyle feels even the relatively small squad will imbue the players that are there with another confidence boost.
"I love that he has picked a 23-man squad - it is an honour to be picked for that squad. This is the group. That would have been the case when I first came into the squad, but for the last number of years you were looking at 35 or 36-man squads. It took away the joy of being picked by your international team.
"All of those little things add up and, hopefully, over time [...] that will add up and we will get some good performances from Stephen. Dundalk were in a bad place when he took them over and he did a fantastic job for them.
"They will all know him, and if they didn't before then they have social media and will have seen what he is about."
Subtleties
Doyle gave an insight into the subtleties of man-management and instilling confidence in players - one in particular stood out as deficient in this regard.
"With Trappatoni, it was how he dealt with the media. I felt like he could talk us up a bit more - I felt that with Martin O'Neill, and with Mick a bit as well.
"If players get or a sense or a sniff [that the manager doesn't have confidence] then you automatically lose confidence. If you think a group of players isn't good enough, you're not going to tell them that."
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