Manager's reaction: John Delaney, the chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland who promised to appoint a "world class" manager after the departure of Brian Kerr, talks often about "going forward", an expression that pops up in most interviews he gives. If what happened in Cyprus on Saturday night is "going forward" then you'd dread to see Irish football in reverse.

It's not that there haven't been dark days before, but this was so dark it was as if the lights had been turned out and the curtains drawn on Irish football. A 5-2 defeat to a team ranked 103rd in the world who had lost their last game 6-1 to Slovakia? How much darker can you get? Worse, the abject manner of it all. Comical, but no one was laughing. That defence was made up of four players from Premiership clubs, with 134 caps between them. No rookies, no kids, no Sean St Ledger or Paul McShane. The midfield? What midfield? The attack? Did we field one? Shambolic doesn't even come close.

So, it had to be asked: "Is your position untenable, Steve?" "I'm not walking away, if that's what you mean," he said when he arrived at the post-match press conference. "It's certainly not beyond me. You've got to look and see, we are in a transitional period. It's nothing to do with that because we'd quite an experienced side out there. You look at the caps the players have. Sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. We worked hard all week, it was done in a professional manner, covered everything and it didn't happen on the night."

Where did it go wrong? "The five goals," he said. Not a night for pithy answers, that performance required some explaining, of a wordier variety. "We started brightly, got the goal and went downhill rapidly after that," he said. "It's a terrible result for us. There's not much more you can say about it. We've just got done 5-2, I'm not happy about it, but we have to pick ourselves up and get ready for Wednesday night. The fans are always going to question you after a defeat like that. I mean, they pay good money, I expect a lot more."

Kevin MacDonald, sitting beside Staunton, was probably just relieved to be off the bench, and will, one assumes, happily hand back the reins to the manager on Wednesday night.

"If you look at the performance we started off very well but the back four made individual errors. That happens in football. We didn't expect it from that back four because they were our most experienced part of it," he said.

"You say we lost it in midfield, I would slightly disagree with you. In my opinion the best player for us was Stephen Ireland who scored his goal and looked as though he might be the one to hurt the opposition. Young (Aiden) McGeady got himself in good positions but didn't finish it off the way we'd hoped. The work we did on the training ground created both goals for us tonight. They showed a bit of bollocks, if that's what you'd want to say, to get back to 2-2. We'd probably two or three chances before then. At the start of the second half I thought the penalty was a very harsh decision and it killed us in many ways. But let's make no bones about it, we lost 5-2 to Cyprus.

"But over history many teams have played poorly on a Saturday have won on Wednesday. Those players have got a lot of pride within themselves and for their country. They're not happy because they can't quite understand why they haven't performed to the best of their ability."

How, Steve, after a performance like that can you improve in time for the Czech Republic? "Well, Northern Ireland did it," he says, in reference to their defeat of Spain. "We'll be definitely trying our best, we'll be trying to pick the lads up. They're as down as we are. They're going to have to pick themselves up, we're going to have to pick them up as well. It's a home game."

Was Shay Given's absence a factor? "Shay's a world-class 'keeper, we all know what an influence he is both on and off the field. Yeah, maybe, but that doesn't excuse some of the defending that went on. They know they've made errors," he said.

"It's as if they never played with each other before," he says of the defence, "so there's not much more you can say about the matter. You can't coach mistakes. From Andy O'Brien's point of view his confidence slowly drained from him as the game went on and that takes an awful lot out of you. I suppose the lack of games haven't helped either."

On to the subject of this "four-year plan" business. What about "now" Steve? Is it time to enlist some help, like the fella at Everton? "I've full faith in the younger players. I mean, two of our better players were young Ireland and Aiden McGeady, so there are positive aspects. We've got a few more coming up. It's a transitional period, you have to play them. We can only deal with what players we've got. We've got to go out there and try and get them as much football at this level as possible. I mean, 12, 18 months ago you wouldn't have been talking about young Ireland or McGeady playing - and they've handled themselves very well."

Lee Carsley? "We're looking forward. The thing is, if you remember a lot of you didn't have a lot of nice things to say about Lee when he last played for Ireland. I've decided to go with young Ireland and he didn't let me down tonight."