Deja vu. Haven’t we been here before? It seems overwhelmingly likely at the time of writing that the Republic of Ireland are back in the position of scanning around for a saviour, with even Trapattoni seeming to have accepted that, for all his bizarre protestations of having done ‘a great job’, there is no way he can continue to brazen it out.

It’s theoretically within the realms of possibility that, by the time you read this, we’ll have escaped from Vienna with a win that keeps some faint semblance of hope alive for another few weeks, but all known precedents from the last decade would suggest otherwise.
No-one can say the old man was under-qualified when he got the job. Even now, a look at his lifetime’s CV would command awe rather than mere admiration. There had been the hint of a suggestion in his last couple of gigs prior to getting the Irish job that Trap’s standards may have been slipping a little, but the appointment seemed quite a coup for the FAI at the time. Looking at the whole picture, he deserves some credit for restoring solidity and shape to the team in his first couple of years, though on a salary like that, it was the least that should have been expected. 
 Trap’s most glorious flourish as Ireland manager, in retrospect, was the heroic defeat in Paris, and it remains open to question how much he really had to do with it, with suspicions persisting to this day that the players went tactically ‘off-message’ and took the law into their own hands that night, summoning up a performance which in terms of skill, invention and courage was unrecognisably superior to anything produced before or since. Over the last three years, and most dramatically in the last two, it has become painfully, screamingly obvious that the man’s footballing worldview remains frozen in 1990. Terminally unwilling or unable to vary the script, the performances (and, of late, the results) have become excruciating. 
 The shortcomings of Trapattoni’s approach to the job have been extensively detailed both here and elsewhere, but it would be only fair to acknowledge that he was dealt a pretty limited hand in terms of playing talent. The five key men (Shay, John O’Shea, Richard Dunne, Duffer and Robbie) were all on the wrong side of 30 for most of his tenure, and despite attempts by the delusional Why-Aren’t-We-Winning-The-World-Cup brigade to suggest that Coleman, Clark, McCarthy, McClean, Brady, Hoolahan, Pilkington et al are natural born world-beaters who would surely win every match 7-0 if only Trap would let them loose, the reality is that they’re not. We’re entitled to despair at the total lack of guile and subtlety evident in the Trapattoni gameplan last Friday against the Swedes, but some of the crass errors in elementary ball control can hardly be blamed on the manager. 
 Foul Play won’t shed any tears at Trap’s belated departure (it was senseless to keep him on after losing 6-1 at home to the Germans), but nor am I under any illusions that there is a manager on the planet who will face anything other than a steep uphill struggle to transform this Ireland team into major-tournament regulars. The situation isn’t helped by the increasingly Fleet Street-like attitude of vast swathes of the Irish footballing public (spoilt on a rich diet of relative success in the period spanning 1987 to 2002), who seem deeply addicted to the Blame Game, losing no opportunity to gnash their teeth and start the finger-pointing at the first hint of a misplaced pass, with the rather obnoxious underlying attitude that we have a divine right to qualify for World Cups and Euro finals. Mick McCarthy, a manager who took us to the last 16 of the World Cup, outplaying Germany and Spain for long spells before losing to the latter on penalties, was hounded from his job a few months afterwards. 
 An RTE vox-pop in the aftermath of the Swedish debacle confirmed that the fans are unanimously in favour of the elderly Italian’s removal. Asked who they wanted to take over, some of the responses were hilarious, one fan in all apparent seriousness suggesting ‘Pep Guardiola’ as the answer to all our problems. Guardiola is a few months into a contract at reigning European champions Bayern Munich, where he gets to work with a stunningly potent group of footballers who, dare I suggest, are even more lavishly gifted than Messrs. Coleman and Hoolahan. The thoughts that might cascade through Guardiola’s mind in the event of the FAI offering him the Republic of Ireland job can only be imagined.  
 Nonetheless, the basic principle of targeting the best man available for the job is a sound one, and there is a currently-unattached manager out there who, a few months ago, would have been a ridiculously unlikely candidate. Foul Play isn’t in any way taking the piss in offering up the following suggestion: why not pick up the phone to Alex Ferguson? What’s to lose? The price of a phone call? 
 It is entirely possible that Fergie’s initial response would be ‘are you fucking serious?’ but surely it’s worth a go. It is known that Sir Alex has always adored the city of Dublin and knows a lot more about Irish history than most of the Irish population do. As for the pro’s and con’s of his managerial abilities, it would be fair to say that the good outweighs the bad. Indeed, the only conceivable negative is his age, and at 71, he is a full three years younger than Trap. It obviously wouldn’t be an especially long-term proposition, but if he were to decide that the challenge appeals to him, it would certainly be an occasion for Irish fans to pop the champagne corks. 
 Many of our current woes can be attributed to the increasing scarcity of young Irish players breaking through at cross-channel clubs, where competition for places is intense and more than 60% of first-team places are taken up by players born outside Britain and Ireland. But we’re not alone in having to adapt to the new realities: England, Scotland and Wales face the same problem. The point is that we urgently need to create a situation where the national senior squad doesn’t exist in a vacuum, a situation where the successful development of our youth teams is every bit as important. For a time, we were doing brilliantly in this regard. Brian Kerr’s under-16s and under-18s became European champions, a feat which still seems incredible to this day. 
 Kerr’s vindictive firing as senior national team manager in 2005 by John Delaney was an exceptionally unwise intervention on the FAI’s part, and we are still paying the price. The Drimnagh man and his assistant, the late Noel O’Reilly, have done more for Irish football than Delaney could ever dream of (and no, buying pints in Poland to ingratiate himself with the fans doesn’t count). In any sort of sane world, Kerr would be given a role of some sort in the international set-up: ideally as a sort of overall performance director, with Sir Alex as national team manager. It sounds a little unlikely, but were we somehow to land Fergie, you can be certain the next generation wouldn’t be neglected.
And as surely as night follows day, if we carry on doing what we’ve been doing for the last eight years, we are following Scotland, Wales and the North into the wilderness of footballing irrelevance. Root-and-branch reform will be required merely to keep pace with other European nations. The stakes are huge. Over to you, FAI.