Stephen Kenny insists that Garry Breen is wrong to describe Kenny's Ireland as a vanity project - but admits he erred in describing the victory against Armenia as 'exceptional'.
Breen, the former Ireland defender turned pundit, expressed his concerns about the way Kenny's team is playing in his newspaper column after the 3-2 Nations League win at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday.
Ireland surrendered a comfortable 2-0 lead in the 71st minute by conceding twice in 90 seconds and it took Robbie Brady's 91st minute spot kick to secure safety in Group B.
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Breen wrote that 'rather than giving instructions from the sideline to raise the tempo, Kenny is lauding the fact we can make 20 to 30 passes, even though it was almost unopposed.
'That, to me, sounds like a vanity project rearing its ugly head again'.
However Kenny believes that Breen was "inaccurate" to pick out that long passage of possession by Ireland in isolation.
“Listen, Gary is entitled to his opinion, as anyone is, I think you’re always going to get strong opinions in this arena and that’s part of it," he commented.
"I did say in the TV interview afterwards that it was an exceptional performance against Armenia, which was too strong a word - it wasn't exceptional.
"I accept that. But there were a lot of very good aspects to the performance that I was pleased with.
"One of the pluses in the first half was that we showed great accuracy and speed in our passing.
"And we talked about that before the game, in press conferences, about tempo, that is what you need to inject tempo into the game and I was pleased with that."
Kenny insists that he is not a slave to one particular system.
"It’s not based on ‘I believe in one system and we fit the players to that system’, you have to be adaptable," he commented.
"The reason we picked these systems is essentially because we are trying to fit a system that suits the players at our disposal.
"There's no point in me lamenting that we haven’t got this type of player or that type of player.
"I’d rather focus on what we have got and to try to maximise the potential.
"That’s my job, really, as manager to try and maximise the potential of the players we have got. Definitely that’s my intention and you can see the evolution of the team".
Kenny argues that he has changed his tactics in acknowledgement that his team played too many ineffectual passes during games early in his reign.
"It’s not (a vanity project)," said the 50-year-old. "Certainly we want a cutting edge to our play, we don’t want to keep possession for possession’s sake.
"If anything we were a little bit guilty of that in my early games - not the first game in Slovakia in the play-off (for Euro 2022).
"But in some of those games, when we were formulating players and some of those players were coming and going, we were passing without penetration.
"We changed that. We made sure we got a lot of focus on our forward passing and to make sure we look forward first."
Kenny explained that he subsequently used a German company, Impect, to measure the extent of Ireland's penetrative passing.
"And, against teams, our score is always high in games, higher than our opponents," he stressed.
"That’s a big part of our training week, we don’t keep possession for possession's sake.
"But we do have to get better again, there is room for improvement."
Less than six months out from the start of the Euro 2024 qualifiers - the draw takes place in Germany on Sunday next, with Ireland now among the third seeds - Kenny is adamant he is happy with Ireland's readiness for the campaign.
Friendlies against Norway and Malta in November will cement his thinking on selection.
But while Kenny will look at bringing in some of the under-21s who lost their Euro play-off to Israel, there won't be wholesale changes at this stage.
"We have to consider a couple of players showing good form," he said.
"We don't want too many changes - it has to be based on merit or on players who will improve us.
"We want an element of continuity going into the European Championship qualifiers."
Meanwhile, Kenny insists that he is comfortable with the FAI's target of reaching the Euro 2024 finals.
There was speculation after Tuesday's victory that a bad start to the qualification campaign in March could end Kenny's three year reign.
The Ireland boss says he knows that the FAI want a successful qualification campaign.
"Yeah, definitely," he said. "Qualification for the Euros is really what would be special for everyone in Ireland, for all Irish people everywhere.
"That's what we're trying to build a team towards and most people can see the potential in the team.
"They can see a lot of good things happening but there are still areas we need to get better at.
"We just have to make sure that by March we improve again.
"I have good communication obviously with Jonathan Hill, who is the CEO of the organisation, and the board - and they've always been supportive."
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