The decision to end the reigns of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane was the right one for the Republic of Ireland, even if it may not have been reached for entirely the right reason and does not go far enough. As so often in such cases, the effect of letting the manager and his assistant know that it would be best if they relinquished their positions is that the chief executive, in this case the Football Association of Ireland’s John Delaney, may also have made his own position a little more secure.

The ruling body has long relied on the senior national team to act as a sop to distract from its failure to develop football in Ireland. Managers are hired at great expense while the domestic league receives paltry support and there is no adequate nationwide scheme for rearing young players.

The FAI leeches to an extent off the efforts of others, including British clubs, in the hope of forming a national team that will qualify for major finals and provide casual fans with a few weeks’ jollity that can make the status quo seem acceptable. That is a big reason why the talent stream flows more haphazardly in Ireland than in countries with properly coordinated and funded programmes.

Martin O’Neill must put the wheels back on Ireland’s clanging wagon Read more

Delaney, one of the highest-paid administrators in European football, seldom submits himself to public questioning but when the national team are doing well in an overseas city he can often be found amid the revellers. When the team are doing badly, by contrast, the chief executive tends to lie low and do his best to suppress dissent.

Ditching the manager might deflect attention for a while. But the fact remains that to increase the chances of future Ireland managers being supplied with better players from which to pick, Delaney and his enablers need to step down, be ousted or to change radically.

That is the big picture. If we narrow the focus, however, then asking O’Neill to leave still made sense, even if the next manager will have the same playing resources at his disposal and probably will not arrive with a record as impressive as that of the departed one.

For all the fine work O’Neill has done in the past, at various clubs and with Ireland, and despite an idiosyncratic brilliance that has many times stimulated against-the-odds triumphs, his well of inspiration has seemed empty in the past year. The team have looked underprepared and aimless. Nothing from their performances suggested they were being led by an experienced and successful manager. It became perfectly reasonable to think someone else could do better.

Results in the first four years under O’Neill and Keane were very good. Reaching the knockout stages of Euro 2016 was a fine exploit and so was reaching the play-offs for the Russia World Cup by finishing second in a difficult group, even if the manner of performances during that campaign did not suggest such results were sustainable.

In the past year O’Neill asked for understanding as he tried to renew a squad depleted by retirements and temporarily afflicted by injuries to key players such as Séamus Coleman and Robbie Brady. Some of the newcomers looked promising – the Preston forward Callum Robinson, for one, and the too-long-overlooked Wolves defender Matt Doherty – while others struggled. In all cases it was hard to avoid the feeling that the players would have found the adaptation to international football easier in a team that played with more cohesion.

Ireland were disjointed and panicky, repeatedly making basic errors while apparently attempting to play off the cuff or to the crudest of gameplans.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roy Keane, left, and Martin O’Neill have left their roles with the Republic of Ireland. Photograph: John Sibley/Action Images via Reuters

Before several home matches O’Neill spoke of trying to get his team to play “on the front foot” by pressing high and passing smartly, but there was little evidence of a plan to do that. Mostly his team relapsed into mass defence and half-cocked attacking or simply became an impotent rabble. They were outplayed in Dublin last week by Northern Ireland because Michael O’Neill’s side were better-drilled and had a brighter vision, not because their opponents had better players.

Over the last year a manager who used to be so adept at creating a synergy sent out teams who played like less than the sum of their admittedly modest parts. O’Neill’s magic wore off.

Although he said he relished the challenge of coaching raw players to become competitive at international level, he appeared to be growing increasingly desperate.

After last month’s 1-0 home loss to Wales he suggested the players should do more to hone skills themselves, recommending that they train in their own time with a tennis ball to improve their techniques, saying that is what he did when he was aged 10.

Similarly, Keane’s infamous bollocking of Harry Arter and Jonathan Walters, later leaked, spoke of a regime whose attempt to address the limitations they encountered had themselves become too limited.