O’Neill damaged after trying to ride two horses at same time

Players Aongus Callanan, Kenny Walsh, Conor Kavanagh, Tadhg Haran and David Fahy at the Liam Mellows GAA Club Victory Celebration and Awards Night in the Clayton Hotel. Photo: Joe O'Shaughnessy.

placeholder image — Players Aongus Callanan, Kenny Walsh, Conor Kavanagh, Tadhg Haran and David Fahy at the Liam Mellows GAA Club Victory Celebration and Awards Night in the Clayton Hotel. Photo: Joe O'Shaughnessy.

Inside Track with John McIntyre

MARTIN O’Neill is a dead manager walking. After attempting to ride two horses in relation to his future sideline plans, the former Northern Ireland international is now damaged goods after an extraordinary ten-days when it appeared the major stakeholders in Irish soccer didn’t know what was going on.

O’Neill may have eventually (and reluctantly) decided to stay on as Republic of Ireland manager, but he has suffered huge reputational damage with many of the team’s supporters openly dismayed the Derry native is finally prepared to honour a verbal commitment he gave to FAI Chief Executive John Delaney last October.

Irish fans feel let-down by O’Neill’s willingness to be courted by Stoke City for their vacant managerial position after the sacking of Mark Hughes – it seems he was also interviewed for the Everton job before that – and rightly question his level of commitment to the Irish cause. O’Neill was playing a dangerous public relations game in keeping all options open to him and it has backfired spectacularly.

After Hughes was sacked, Espanyol manager Quique Sanchez Flores and O’Neill were quickly linked with the Potters, but it soon became clear that the Spaniard was the club’s first choice and a deal had been agreed until Flores’ change of heart at the eleventh hour. Suddenly, O’Neill was now the front-runner to fill the vacancy.

All the while, the information vacuum was embarrassing. Neither the FAI nor O’Neill, ironically not even when he turned up at the Irish Soccer Writers awards in Dublin on Friday night, were prepared to make a public comment. The Irish soccer fraternity was completely out of the loop and the longer the controversy dragged on, the more supporters felt disenfranchised from O’Neill.

Interested observers were left trying to second guess what was going on. After his late change of heart to travel to Dublin last Friday, it appeared that O’Neill was nailing his colours to the Irish mast but, at that stage, it was easy for him as Flores had reportedly accepted the Stoke job only to unexpectedly perform a U-turn the following day.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.