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A defiant Stephen Kenny has insisted criticism of his reign to date is \u201cirrelevant\u201d to him as he attempts to build a new-look Republic of Ireland team.<\/p>\nA defiant Stephen Kenny has insisted criticism of his reign to date is \u201cirrelevant\u201d to him as he attempts to build a new-look Republic of Ireland team.<\/p>\n
Ireland ended a difficult international window with a 1-1 friendly draw against World Cup hosts Qatar in Debrecen after their hopes of making it to the finals were dealt a potentially fatal blow by opening Group A defeats at the hands of Serbia and, on Saturday, Luxembourg.<\/p>\n
Kenny has now gone 11 games without a win at the start of his reign and has had to deal with the fall-out from the debacle at the weekend, but remains unbowed.<\/p>\n
Asked if he was hurt by the criticism, he said: \u201cI\u2019ve experienced a lot in my life and I feel really strong. To be honest with you it doesn\u2019t hurt me because you know what? I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what I\u2019m doing, I\u2019m very clear what I\u2019m doing, real clarity in what I\u2019m trying to implement and I don\u2019t care what anyone says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very clear what I want to do and it\u2019s irrelevant to me what other people think, to be honest with you. There are people are coming out of the woodwork wanting to kick us while we\u2019re down, and that\u2019s very evident and maybe that\u2019s to be expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people have turned very quickly. We will get back on track and we will give the Irish supporters a team that they can be really proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kenny\u2019s evening in Hungary started in the best possible fashion when James McClean, winning his 80th cap, fired his side into a fourth-minute lead with his first international goal since October 2017.<\/p>\n
Mohamed Muntari levelled two minutes after the break but Ireland passed up two glorious opportunities to win it at the death when Callum Robinson missed the target and then fellow substitute Josh Cullen saw his stoppage-time header saved by keeper Saad Al Sheeb.<\/p>\n
Kenny said: \u201cI felt it was a good game overall. I felt it was quite an open game, two teams playing progressively.<\/p>\n
\u201cQatar are quick on the counter-attack, they have dynamic players who are quite fast, they have speed in their team, but overall I felt we deserved to win the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe probably had four or five very good chances and two chances in the last 10 minutes \u2013 I don\u2019t know how we didn\u2019t score then at the end \u2013 so we\u2019re disappointed not to win the game overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Qatar counterpart Felix Sanchez, whose players did not take a knee before kick-off, was happy enough with a draw after victories over Luxembourg and Azerbaijan as his side prepares for the finals.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard said: \u201cIn general in the three games, we had a good performance, a lot of positive things to take from these three games. We are happy with our performance and the results.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s game, of course, when after three minutes you are losing 1-0, the team showed that we played to try to win the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were pressing high, we created some good chances, we took some risks. We need to be proud of our players for the performance, for the effort and for the result. I think it was the minimum we deserved.\u201d<\/p>\n