‘What’s the long-term plan for John?’ - Shay Given says O’Shea has been treated unfairly in Ireland manager saga

A promise by the FAI to have a new coach in place in April – having missed an earlier deadline of February – was broken as there is still no permanent replacement for Stephen Kenny, so O’Shea will take charge next month for the friendly games against Hungary and Portugal. That means that the new boss – assuming that’s not O’Shea – will manage the side for the first time in a testing double header against England and Greece in September.

“I don't know if it was handled very well, the announcement that the new manager was coming in and we were all waiting on tenterhooks, in an ideal world you'd get it announced in April like they said they would, it's more questions than answers," Given said today, as he praised O’Shea who has had to swallow his pride and come back in for a second stint as caretaker, having effectively been told that he was not in the frame to land the post on a permanent basis.

"John has been a brilliant servant to the country and it's very difficult to turn this down, that's the road John wants to go down as a manager and coaching, I went a different route with media work.

"The first question I'd ask him is, what guarantees have you been given going forward? John is looking at the bigger picture of the country. It could have been dealt with better, if they'd said at the start of March, we want you for these four games and make a decision after that, that would have been better but the way it's been handled has not been ideal.

“They went back to John again which John agreed to, but what's the long-term plan for John? Is he going to be involved with the new manager, has he been promised something? I don't have any answers to that but you’d like to think that with John going back in for June he's had some reassurances that he will be kept on under a new manager, but that's only me reading between the lines.

"I don't know the ins and outs behind the scenes, John was brought in for the two games in June with a new manager to be announced in April, that's now changed to September and they've gone back to John for the two games in June. The March games didn't go to plan, in terms of getting wins, but the training and the set-up, the stuff behind the scenes that we don't see on matchday with John and the staff was very smooth.”

Today's Sport News in 90 Seconds - 15th May

Given has often been in a position where he was asked to report for international duty in June, weeks after the conclusion of the club season and with the fact that the Championship’s regular season ended last week, the long break between now and the June dates with Ireland is not ideal, especially for out-of-contract players like Alan Browne and Aaron Connolly.

“We have a lot of players in the Championship, they will have two or three weeks off before they meet up and in the modern day game, a lot of the players keep ticking over, someone like James McClean, I don't know if he ever goes to sleep or switches off. The modern player doesn't have that much down time, back in the day you would get six weeks off but not now, they are training themselves so June could be a good training base for the likes of Alan Browne if he is going into a new club, he will be relatively fit for the end of June,” Given added.

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