MARTIN O' NEILL has warned Stephen Kenny that he needs to starts winning football matches and that building a side for the future comes second to it,
Ireland have now lost 12 games in the Nations League, and these include some of the worst sides in the world like Armenia and Luxembourg.
Kenny has said that 'he isn't feeling the pressure' ahead of the Scotland game, but O' Neill believes that a serious chat need's to be had if the poor run continues.
Speaking to the Scottish edition of The Times, the former Ireland boss, who left in 2018 said: "The Armenia game was a big, big setback,"
"Sometimes you get a couple of results in matches against sides who are not in the top 80 - teams like Andorra and Lithuania. You can start to get a false impression of where you are.
"Then you travel to Armenia fully expecting to win and get off to a bad start; it’s a major setback for them. I suppose a couple of years into Stephen’s reign, you’d have to ask questions about their progress).
"If his remit was to rebuild an Irish side and get time to do that then that’s fine. But in international football you still have to win football matches."
Martin O'Neill has questioned the direction the Republic of Ireland are going in under Stephen Kenny https://t.co/HG8aFeCiTS
— Irish Mirror Sport (@MirrorSportIE) June 10, 2022
Reflecting on his Ireland tenure that also threw up a mixed bag, O' Neill mentioned that Ireland lacked a player like Robbie Keane to propel them to more international tournaments
When I was managing the Republic, Robbie (Keane) was ending his career, he added.
"He was about 34 and just couldn’t do it. He could maybe play and score a hat-trick against Gibraltar but against the bigger sides he wouldn’t be able to do what he had been capable of doing.
"We would have cried out for a Robbie Keane to be maybe ten years younger, but we didn’t have that. At the European Championships in France, our main man was Jon Walters. You wouldn’t call Jon prolific.
Ireland lost 5-1 to Denmark in the World Cup play-off and O' Neill said that only having James McClean wasn't enough for Ireland back then.
"In the World Cup play-off that we got to, when Denmark hammered us, our main man was James McClean.
"Scotland do not possess a Gareth Bale at the minute and Ireland haven’t had one since Robbie in his heyday. Everyone is crying out for that and that is probably the difference between Scotland not heading to the World Cup."
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