Niall Quinn believes the next Ireland manager should be more than just head of the senior team and wants to see a complete overhaul of the structures in this country.
The former Ireland, Sunderland and Arsenal striker joined us on the Football Show to share his view on the end of the Martin O'Neill era and where the FAI go from here in regard to finding a successor and addressing some of the other issues in Irish football.
"John [Delaney] made that decision. It surprised me," said Quinn of the decision to part ways with O'Neill and assistant Roy Keane at this juncture.
"I thought there were a lot of reasons why it wouldn't happen, particularly with the fees that the guys earned.
"But it's happened now so it's always at this time, a few hours later you go, 'The king is dead, long live the next king."
On the decline towards the end of the O'Neill era, he added, "I just couldn't believe that I was seeing an Irish team that had no presence in the final third".
As for who he would like to see take over, Quinn wants to see "a joined-up approach" to the setup which would see the next manager have remit stretching from the senior team to the underage teams.
"I'd love someone to come in that could carry that mantle of being a coach of football in Ireland and not just the senior team," he said.
"That all points towards Stephen Kenny. I think he could do something like that. He could link everything up. There's a lot wrong if you look at the structure and their elite talent and how we emerge and how our players end up being footballers. We could do an awful lot better. I don't think we can just entirely blame the FAI. If you look at other sports like rugby, they bring in a system in the provinces, the academies they produce and the young players getting the finest training in the world to come out then and try and push for places in top teams, we don't do that."
Quinn added that the League of Ireland does not end up benefiting from good footballers that do make it through in the current system, and that the best way would be to have academies attached the clubs that would be able to add value that clubs would receive when Premier League or entities come calling for their services in the transfer market.
"There's a lot wrong here and Martin and Roy is a part of the act that gets the headlines but we need a far better in-depth look at our structures."
And he also made a point about the place that the League of Ireland should hold within the FAI.
"I think the one thing I would say is - and I would say this in front of John [Delaney] - there's no FAI great love for the League of Ireland and that's the problem," said Quinn.
"I think he called it the problem child. That has to be your favourite child. That has to be the child you spoil rotten and that's not happened," he said.
"And I do think it is difficult for the FAI to do that. And I've said it recently at the PFAI dinner and I spoke about we've had tax breaks for investment in failing sports and film industries and hotel industries over the last 10-15 years.
"But you know soccer in our country is the most participated sport. You've 470,000 people lining up at weekends, we have referees. It's an incredible amount when you consider the size of the country. But yet our government consistently ignores the challenge that is there for football to have a bigger place and a boost over what's happened to it over the last 20 years. The government should look at bringing tax breaks."
Overseas investment into new League of Ireland academies would alleviate the financial pressure on the FAI according to Quinn and he added that, "I know for a fact that two groups of people would come in and buy a League of Ireland club and investment money in those systems if they were enticed to do it and there was break".
You can check out the interview with Brian Kerr on his view of the FAI's upper echelons and who he would like to see appointed as Ireland manager right here.
