New season may see many new faces

On Soccer: As he oversees the completion of his side's preparations for tomorrow's game against San Marino, Steve Staunton will be acutely aware of just how much pressure he is going to come under in the unlikely event that San Marino bounce back from hefty defeats against the Germans and Czechs to secure a point or more at Lansdowne Road.

If the novice manager of the Republic's national team needs a broader view of just how treacherous a trade he's gotten himself into, though, he should talk with colleagues from the domestic league.

Though most of the departed will ostensibly have walked of their own free will, it's entirely conceivable that when the new FAI-backed league kicks off in the springtime just three of the 12 managers that started this season in charge of premier division sides will still be in their posts.

Last week's confirmation that Stephen Kenny will be in Edinburgh by the start of next week makes him departure number six although, to be fair, this figure does include Dermot Keely who simply followed his employers out of football.

A first glance at the table suggests a predictable pattern with each of the current bottom three having parted company with their manager in recent months but a longer look reveals the depth of the problem faced by those attempting to make a career in management here. Lifting the league trophy, for instance, might well be Pat Fenlon's final act as manager of Shelbourne if the season ends and he remains unconvinced that the way the club is run will not change beyond recognition next year. Fenlon has, by the league's standards, been given a lot of money to spend over the last few years but if Shelbourne do finish first it will be a tribute to his powers of crisis management.

Similarly financial instability is at the heart of the uncertainty over Damien Richardson's future at Cork City. Twelve months after he led the southerners to their first championship in a dozen years, Richardson insisted on Friday he was keen to stay but, out of contract and with ownership of the club up for grabs, even he would do well to charm a bank manager into giving him a hefty new mortgage just now.

Seán Connor, who like Kenny has walked of his own volition and is set to re-emerge at Dalymount Park, potentially brings the tally of top five (as of this morning) casualties to four.

The exception is Paul Doolin at Drogheda where, despite failing to make the hoped for progress in the league there have been compensations. Last year's FAI Cup success and the Setanta Cup triumph appear to have sustained the Drogheda board's belief that the former Bohemians and Shelbourne skipper is still the man to guide United to the big time.

UCD have had a solid season under the capable stewardship of Pete Mahon but Alan Matthews, also out of contract at Longford, is another whose future hangs in the balance as he has yet to indicate his intentions for next year.

In the circumstances then, it's hardly surprising that Kenny - sacked by Bohemians just a couple years ago when it seemed he might abandon both the game and the country in order to find a more secure way of feeding his family - is prepared to take his chances in Scotland while a good many of the brightest and best players in the league choose to shun management altogether when their on-field careers draw to a close.

It rarely receives much attention but the situation is a distinctly unhealthy one from the FAI's point of view. One of the more interesting questions to arise when his fiercest critics were proposing to tool up with flaming torches and run Staunton out of town was just who might replace the 37-year-old. The obvious difficulty is that when hiring last time around the FAI set itself the target of hiring a "top class manager" while allocating a budget for what is now described as "a top class management team" that is roughly half of what the most poorly paid managers in the Premiership bank each year.

The situation is only going to get worse and so the association faces a choice . . . either it hugely increases the amount it is willing to give the men who take the job in future or it concedes that for its lofty ambitions Irishmen, most likely either former internationals like Staunton and Mick McCarthy, are going to be the only serious options.

While he will be a considerable loss to the league Kenny's departure for Scotland should, in this respect at least, be regarded as a positive for Irish football as a whole. The Dubliner is determined to further his management career and everything about him suggests he has the ability to climb a good deal higher. If he thrives at Dunfermline and then goes on to bigger things he will start to look like a very strong contender for the Ireland job at some point in the future.

Fenlon, too, has been linked with a move away - Denmark in his case - although the Shelbourne boss has strongly indicated that if he does leave Tolka Park his preference is to stay in Irish club management.

After a week in which he'd had to coach players unsure of whether they would get paid at the end of the week, and wonder just how many games his side had to secure the league title, you could be forgiven for wondering why.