“It felt like the right choice,” Kilbane stated when asked if it was time to move on from O’Neill and Keane.

“It has felt to me that a decision had to be made 48 hours after that Denmark game and particularly after the Northern Ireland game at the Aviva. I think it was going that way. It is imperative we get to the Euros in 2020, that’s the way it is, especially when there are going to be games here (Dublin). That’s what’s forced the hand of John Delaney and the FAI.”

2018 went dreadfully for Martin O’Neill and a recent change of style didn’t help the former Irish manager’s cause.

“The results have not been great since the Euros,” Kilbane stated.

“We have changed the style and settled on a particular pattern of play with five at the back now. We are offering nothing in attack with the system that we are utilising.

"The constant message I am hearing is that we don’t have the players. Maybe lads not at the top end playing Premier League level but we are not playing to the level we can with the players we have.

“I don’t buy into it (run of bad results) is because there have been a couple of retirements either.

The only player we have seriously missed is Wes Hoolahan but then he didn’t start an awful lot of games during the last four years.

“We have heard very little from inside the camp apart from Jon Walters and James McClean.

I don’t know how much you can read into that because I think the likes of Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick are not on Instagram or anything like that anyway.