Unlucky general Kenny now needs everything to go right
Whatever your view is on Stephen Kenny's tenure as Republic of Ireland manager, no one will ever describe him as being a lucky general.
Kenny must have strolled under a few ladders and encountered a litter of black cats on his first day in the job. Pretty much from the get-go, he's had regular bouts of rotten fortune.
In his third game at the helm - the Euro 2020 play-off semi-final against Slovakia - he lost key attackers Adam Idah and Aaron Connolly before kick-off because, on the plane to Bratislava, they'd been sitting less than two metres away from a member of the FAI back-room staff who later tested positive for Covid-19. That meant they were deemed close contacts.
After spurning some golden chances to win the match, Ireland were beaten in a penalty shootout. It later transpired that the back-room staff member's Covid test had returned a false positive - Idah and Connolly should have been allowed to play. They were also sitting in the wrong seats on the plane, mistakenly heading to the back with the non-playing members of staff when they should have been further up the plane with the rest of the team.
That set the tone for a miserable run of results, a carousel of misfortune and a series of unfortunate events.
Before the 3-0 friendly defeat to England at Wembley, Kenny showed his players a motivational video to gee them up. Although it's never been released to the public domain, it's understood the video was a showreel of famous goals scored against England, followed by 30 seconds of historical context of the relationship between the two countries.
After murmurings about some players being uneasy about it, the FAI launched an internal investigation. Kenny's assistant Damien Duff would later step away from his post,