Stephen Kenny says ‘there is no problem with the Irish’s team’s mentality

Kenny says it would be wrong to link Tuesday’s unexpected two-goal rally from Armenia with Scotland’s come from behind win in Glasgow last weekend.

His side were able to recover and win at the Aviva Stadium courtesy of Robbie Brady’s penalty, but it raised questions about the direction of Kenny’s team.

The manager retains the view that it was a good performance overall against the group’s worst team, and dismissed the idea there’s a weakness when it comes to holding onto advantages. Ireland also scored first in defeats to Portugal and Serbia in World Cup qualifiers last year.

“It’s not a mentality issue,” said Kenny, who said his players lost their structure in their search for another goal when two ahead on Tuesday.

“Every game is different. There is no correlation for example between that game and the Scottish game on Saturday night, two different entities and they are not comparable in my opinion. You analyse them differently.

“I think it (Tuesday) is a good performance overall. A very good performance. I think we just shot ourselves in the foot for a few minutes and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

“It was a good performance from a technical point of view and we dominated. There is room for improvement in some of our attacking play and we were uber aggressive in pursuit of that third goal when we didn’t need to be. That was really it.

“The players know. How did they end up in that situation when they were absolutely dominant? How did it happen?

“I think it’s important that they realise that they actually did a lot of things very well in the game and we must learn from that situation and I expect that they will.

“We made mistakes and ultimately conceded goals but we won the match and completely deserved to win the match.”