"Steve Staunton and Bobby Robson? Well, it has to be the biggest gamble the FAI has ever taken in its history. What is the thinking behind it? I have no idea. I've tried to look at it rationally, and have come up with zilch. I've tried to look at it in a slightly off-the-wall way, and I've come up with zilch. I really, really don't understand it.

"Unfortunately I think the FAI may end up rueing this decision . . . I'm half expecting, two years down the road, for the FAI to realise their greatest ever gamble has failed to pay off."

- Mark Lawrenson, Irish Times, January 11, 2006

I was baffled back in January of last year when the FAI appointed Steve Staunton and Bobby Robson, it just didn't make any sense to me at all, not least the decision to give Steve a four-year contract when he had never managed before - that was a quite staggering decision. If you're taking a gamble of that magnitude the most you offer is a two-year contract, then you wait and see what happens. It was madness, and that's not hindsight, most of us feared as much at the time.

It has, then, been a gamble that didn't pay off, and while initially I felt they should stick with Steve and give him the time they had, after all, promised him when they gave him the job, it reached a point where he had to go, there was no other choice.

He's a nice lad, Steve, I had a lot of time for him when we were team-mates at Liverpool, so I do feel sorry for him. After the personal joy he must have felt back when he was made manager of his country, having had an exceptional playing career for Ireland, it's been a horrible experience for him since. But the results and performances just haven't been good enough, and really there was never any indication that they would improve.

Yes, Steve argued that he should be given more time because he had blooded a new batch of young players, given them the experience he believed would serve Ireland well in the years ahead, but I always felt with this new batch that it was more about quantity than quality.

It's been "on the job" training for a lot of these players, much as it has been for their manager, many of them thrown in at the deep end, like Andy Keogh and Joey O'Brien, when the pressure was at its most intense. Some have shown real promise, Kevin Doyle and Paul McShane for example, but I think with most of the rest it's been much of a muchness.

Which has been part of the problem. When you look at the team now there are probably still only four or five players assured of their places - Shay Given, Richard Dunne, Steve Finnan, Robbie Keane and, when fit, Damien Duff - but no more than that.

Almost two years after Steve's appointment we needed to start seeing a settled team, at least eight or nine certainties in the starting line-up, but trying to predict each selection became a guessing game.

When you look at some of the teams that we've fielded, we've played a little bit like strangers, it's never quite knitted together, new combinations all the time, in every department. I always believed it takes a player between 10 and 15 games at international level to actually feel he's part of it, to feel comfortable at that level, but most of these new players just never had that luxury.

This, though, is where Steve deserves some sympathy. For him to have been successful he would have needed Duff, Given, Finnan, Dunne and Keane to have not just played every game, but to have played at the very top of their form. But, in total, that group missed a dozen of our qualifying games, Duff the last four and, crucially, Given the game in Cyprus.

But, sympathy aside, the question is are we any further down the road than when we started with Steve? You'd have to argue - no. I don't even see any shoots of recovery. What Steve had to achieve, like Alex McLeish with Scotland, was to get his best players playing to their maximum and the rest to play above themselves, and that just didn't happen.

Of course, all that nonsense from John Delaney about appointing a world class manager, or world class management team, whatever it was, just left the FAI asking to be ridiculed. They're a much more professional body now than they were in the past, although that's not saying a lot, but the next appointment will be the most important decision they've had to make in many years.

They have to get it right.

Choosing someone to choose the new manager . . . well, for me that's just passing the buck. What they should do is privately canvass the opinions of people they respect, but ultimately they have to make the decision, that's their job.

I would be very, very open-minded about it, there is absolutely no rush whatsoever, we won't start our World Cup qualifying campaign for another year, or thereabouts. They don't have to pander to the press, the decision doesn't have to made in the next month or two, all that matters now is that they get it right.

I think it is an attractive job. I think people will be surprised by the candidates who apply. David O'Leary is the current favourite, but, sorry - no. For me, that's just going down the route we've already been. Paul Jewell? I'm a fan of his, I think he did really well at Bradford and Wigan, but international management is very different. Ideally I'd like to see someone who has experience in that field.

More than anything, though, we need a steady hand on the tiller, ideally someone who's seen it all before, good times and bad times, and has lived to tell the tale. Above all, no gambling this time.