Manchester United legend Roy Keane has given a damming assessment of the current crop of players playing for the Republic Of Ireland, insisting that they are not good enough and that they either need to improve or be replaced by players who are more hungry to play for the country. The words are coming after the country suffered a shock defeat against Luxembourg on their home turf, something Keane described as unacceptable.

Stephen Kenny’s side played their opening World Cup Qualifying game and it ended in defeat – a 3-2 loss to Serbia on Wednesday. They then approached their second Group A fixture with a mindset of going for a win but unfortunately suffered a consecutive defeat, leaving their qualification hopes in shambles. Gershon Rodrigues scored a deciding late goal to hand his country Luxembourg a much-needed victory over Ireland in Dublin, something almost no one was expecting to happen.

The result now means that Ireland will have to face a very difficult task of making it to the 2022 World Cup next year while also mounting more pressure on Stephen Kenny’s future as the national team’s manager.

Speaking on ITV, Keane said it was a very difficult night for Northern Ireland and that they have hit rock-bottom with that result. The former Manchester United player said that the country has a group of players who are not at the needed level to play for the nation, insisting that they do not have real quality to play for the side. Keane’s comments can be well justified given that Luxembourg who defeated the Republic of Ireland are the 98th-placed team in FIFA’s world rankings. He went on to say that since most of the players in the group play in the Championship, more efforts should be put in to get better players into the side.