If we are to believe some reports, the FAI has already begun to sound out their players in their seemingly unwieldy efforts to unearth Steve Staunton's successor as Irish manager.

However, these accounts aren't necessarily wedded to the truth. Questionnaires aren't being tactfully placed beneath the players' pillows as their beds are being turned down.

Nevertheless, those on the FAI board, particularly chief executive John Delaney, will hardly be able to ignore the elephant in the room as he and the Irish players pitch up in their Welsh lodgings this week.

Already, Stephen Hunt has cast his opinion on the matter, plumping for Terry Venables. Which is fair enough. The players are key stakeholders in the appointment, after all, and consultation and input from them is crucial.

But one should be necessarily wary of ceding too much responsibility to a profession which, by its very nature, representsa profoundly self-interested constituency.

The pinnacle of the rabid self-centredness which permeates professional football's cosseted fraternity is the unfailing loyalty demonstrated towards hapless managerial incumbents until the very second of their removal.

Steve Staunton, once a foot-soldier with many of the players whose desultory efforts would ultimately contribute to his downfall, was unanimously supported to the point where his ass bit the dust despite his captain's deluded protestations on prime time's highest-rated programme.

Brian Kerr, too, will have once recalled the glad tidings and back-slapping unity of his self-obsessed squad, before seeing his credibility subsequently sundered by the very players who had welcomed his appointment.

Staunton will have mused upon this cycle, which begins with enthusiastic endorsement at the manager's appointment, and terminates in platitudinous piety at his departure.

Fast forward to this week's sepulchral sojourn in the Valleys, and the Irish players are more concerned with who will next acquire the seemingly dubious distinction of being national team manager.

Those Irish players we were told who would retire in disgust should Kerr be driven out are still with us.

So too the players who expressed an equally ferocious commitment to quit should Staunton's infamous four-year plan be excised.

Realism

It is the way of the football world. Players are creatures of habit, their loyalty driven by realism, not emotion.

The next Irish manager will be joyously acclaimed by squad members, surrendering recent disappointments to history and hailing a bright future, all the while admonishing public and press alike that time would be a precious commodity as Irish football entered a period of transition.

Who that next manager will be is impossible to predict, but Venables' name is conducive to lively debate. Ironically, his availability for the post depends upon an English crowd recording an equally irate outburst to that which ultimately did for Staunton in Croke Park last month.

Venables' credentials are not impeccable. If anything, they are hopelessly compromised. He is a controversial character, and his dubious off-field reputation precedes the track-suited figure at ease on the training pitch.

Financial pecadilloes jostle with Venables' renowned coaching prowess for attention; as a startlingly varied yet ultimately underwhelming CV competes with the football world's acknowledged appreciation for his tactical acumen and motivational powers.

A First Division title with Crystal Palace, a La Liga title and a Spanish League Cup with Barcelona, and the FA Cup with Spurs are his only tangible achievements, the last dated some 16 years ago -- hardly decorous representations of a supreme coaching talent.

Since then, flirtations with Portsmouth, Australia, Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough, Leeds and now England, as hapless Steve McClaren's assistant, have all ended ingloriously, accompanied in some instances by tales if financial chicanery.

"If you can't stand the heat in the dressing room," he once warned, "you've got to get out of the kitchen."

Impressive

While impressive feats of bi-location may endear Venables to the FAI, it is unclear whether his recorded improprieties as a company director will satisfy their thirst to ensure that sleaze and controversy no longer darken the door of No 80 Merrion Square.

Yet, were they to cast their eyes beyond the wide-boy, Dagenham Dave image and the derivative patter that combines bookie shop bore and incomprehensible bar-fly, they would see a guaranteed motivator who would, at the very least, re-energise both the belief and the combative qualities of the Irish squad.

His commercial treachery should not render his coaching qualifications as counterfeit.

"He was spot on when I was there," recalled Robbie Keane soon after Leeds' lurch into the financial abyss forced Venables to sell him to Tottenham Hotspur.

Presumably Keane would not be averse to the appointment of Venables, who was a penalty-kick away from bringing a talented England side to the Euro '96 final.

His commitment to the cause may be questionable, but it has always been thus with a working-class Londoner whose very upbringing prompted him to always overstretch himself, fearing that if he stopped trying to spot the next opportunity, it would never come.

From heavily funding the promotion of tiddlywinks as an Olympic sport, to his varied disguises as game-show deviser, TV writer, and novelist, Venables' inattention to detail has masked his commitment to his primary talent.

Those who still mourn the departure of Brian Kerr from the Irish football family will find little encouragement in Venables.

Two years ago, after Kerr's contract was not renewed, bookmakers stopped taking bets on Venables becoming the new coach, amid speculation that he had met with FAI officials in a London restaurant; his odds scythed from 13/2 to 1/4.

He boasts the experience desired by the FAI and, should they follow through on their reluctance to appoint another Irishman, Venables' name may enter their discussions, regardless of the status of his England employment.

"I've been offered quite a lot of positions. But if something came up that was special, like Ireland which is international, it may be interesting."

Venables said this when the vacancy arose in 2005.

As Venables once said with stunning perspicacity, "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."

The players would welcome him with open arms, too. Until, of course, the day he walks out with another bag of money from those kings of the pay-offs in Merrion Square.

It's the way of the football world.

- David Kelly