THE following is all true. Ireland are on a threegame unbeaten run.

Ireland have just put together back-toback wins for the first time in four years. Ireland are third in their qualifying group with the top two teams still to play each other twice. Ireland have two home games in the space of four days next up, both against teams below them in the table. And a muppet is a piece of cloth, not an actual, real-life Football Association of Ireland employee. To borrow the latest FAI buzz-phrase and try it out for size, these are facts, not spin.

Oh, okay then. They're facts and spin. Whatever people say about John Delaney, nobody thinks for a second that he's a fool. You'll hear people who've watched his rise to the top of Irish football describe him as ruthless, as driven, as clear-eyed and as notto-be-trifled-with but you'll never hear him described as an eejit. Still, when he was rehearsing what he was going to say on television and radio on Thursday afternoon, you have to wonder how silly he thought he sounded in his head.

No Matt, what I said was that we were going to bring in a world-class management team, not a world-class manager? Well Brian, the performance was disappointing but if results go our way, we could be second in the group after the next game? But Des, it wasn't just me who appointed Steve - it was a Board Of Management decision? In many ways, it's Delaney's situation that has been the most remarkable aspect of this whole farrago. When San Marino scored on Wednesday night, the immediate instinct of the Irish supporters was to turn on him and not the manager. Supporters breaking into a chant calling for the head of an FAI official even as their team takes kick-off after conceding a goal is unprecedented in the history of the game here. And the reason for it is that, really and truly, few people are angry with Steve Staunton. They're sick of the sight of him on the sideline to be sure and they're losing respect for him at a rate of knots but when it comes down to it, they just wish he'd walk and leave it be.

But Delaney? For Delaney there is serious vitriol. Throughout the eight minutes or so that Ireland were chasing the winner in Serravalle, the chief executive was on the receiving end of the kind of barrage usually reserved for people walking out of court-houses with jackets over their heads. It was that vicious. The stadium was small and the crowd smaller and so everyone on that side of the ground could hear each word and feel each volley of abuse. The FAI people sitting alongside him all stared straight ahead or at the ground, shifting uncomfortably in their seats as the game went on almost unnoticed.

It used to be so different with Delaney.

Unique among his FAI peers, he wasn't a spoofer. Back in 2000, when Bernard O'Byrne came up with a series of costs and revenue projections for Eircom Park that made twice-a-week Lotto players look like pessimists, it was Delaney who stood up to him on it. When Saipan came tumbling down around the FAI's ears, it was Delaney who suggested to Brendan Menton that a consultancy firm be brought in to look at the association from top to bottom, which in turn brought about the Genesis report that cost Menton his job. O'Byrne, Menton, even Fran Rooney - you could have envisaged them spluttering away about the difference between a world-class manager and a world-class management team. But not Delaney.

The disappointment that this is what he turned out to be is at the heart of the anger towards him. (It's true that there's an element of it that's Eircom League-related too but a lot of that is self-righteous and, as it happens, misplaced. Delaney may be guilty of a colossal misjudgement in his choice of international manager - sorry, international management team - but the league has been ill for a long time now and it wasn't him that got it infected. But we digress. ) It is anger at the fact that he could have been so wrong, that he could have ever thought Staunton would be a good idea and that he refuses to admit he made a hames of it. Anger too at the fact that he has never once in the past shown any reluctance to push the button and release the trapdoor when it needed to be done and at the perception that he's unwilling to do so now because he and Staunton are friendly.

It was never a secret that Delaney didn't like Brian Kerr. He was outvoted when Kerr was originally appointed and clashed with him during his reign because he thought Kerr was altogether too keen to involve himself in the minutiae of the running of the game beyond the national team. At Delaney's first real opportunity he made Kerr walk the plank, ostensibly because the world ranking had fallen seven places and because he hadn't qualified for the World Cup. And although Kerr had his backers and could maybe argue that he was a little harshly treated, it was by no means a scandal. It was a marginal call and in an association that Delaney had reformed through relentlessly demanding higher standards and fewer excuses, it was a justifiable move.

But under Staunton, the ranking has fallen 30 places and so the given reason for keeping him on is that Ireland are third in the table and still in with a chance of qualifying for Euro 2008. The thought process here is baffling. Yes, Ireland have a mathematical chance of qualifying but - and this might seem a little unkind to bring up but here goes anyway - has anyone saying that actually seen them play football? By this rationale, Everton could still win the Premiership, Westmeath the All Ireland and Scotland the Six Nations.

The Czech Republic game showed that, in the mood, they can raise a gallop and keep up with the form horses. But Cyprus and San Marino laid bare that, in the other mood, they can tail off with the also-rans. Teams like that finish midtable in qualifying groups. They don't qualify for tournaments.

Staunton's much-derided four-year plan recognised this. Or at least it would have had he followed through on it. The opportunity was there last week to flood his team with youngsters and he didn't do it. Had a midfield of Stephen Ireland, Stephen Hunt, Stephen Quinn and Damien Duff just about scraped a 2-1 win over San Marino, he would have had justification when he told his detractors that this is what happens when you try and blood a new squad. But for Lee Carsley and Kevin Kilbane to still be in the side shows his insecurity and a lack of belief in this four-year-plan.

Staunton's one chance of a future was to write off the campaign. Dismiss every set-back as a teething problem, every decent performance as a baby step along the road. Thank all the good servants and decent pros and let them know that for now, the future is other people. He keeps saying that this is a transition period, as if that is something that just grows out of the ground or is dependent on lunar cycles.

A transition period has to be of his making. Flush out the squad. Revitalise it. Change the tenor of it, the atmosphere in it. Shake the Keanes and Duffs from their torpor and make them believe that if they buy into his ideas, there's a careerrounding-off World Cup in South Africa for them at the end of it. There'd have been rocky times and he'd have lost early and lost often but he'd have at least been working towards something. As it is, he's lost early and often anyway and all he's been working towards is the door. By clinging on to qualification that he and everyone else must have known was beyond a rudderless, wandering squad, he has invested in hope and might-bes and maybes. It isn't a plan. It's a punt.

Remember the excoriation Kerr took when he suggested in the Final Words documentary that he could only do so much from the dug-out, that he couldn't head the ball away for John O'Shea?

That's where Staunton has found himself now. When we asked him what he'd planned in training that hadn't come off in a game where the set-pieces were routinely awful, he didn't spare the players at all.

"You can't go out and play the pass for them, " he said. "We work on set plays but if the boy doesn't put the delivery in or whoever is attacking the ball doesn't attack the ball there's nothing you can do.

You can work on it all you want in training but if they don't do it within the 90 minutes what can you do about it? We've done everything we can. We always have done. The boys just didn't do it."

It was a rare moment of honesty on Wednesday night, even if it was a little self-serving and arse-covering, and if this was the rule rather than the exception, then that at least would be something. There'd be some sort of consistency from him, some sort of notion that he had a philosophy on how he was going to motivate his players.

But there's never been a clear sense of what it is he does to get performances out of the squad. Indeed, the best two performances of the campaign appear to have come from bruised egos stung by the defeats against Holland and Cyprus.

Maybe that bodes well for the Wales game. Maybe it means nothing at all.

It clearly won't be long until we're talking about him in the past tense and surely all that remains is to see whether it's him or Delaney who does the decent thing. If he came out tomorrow and, Kevin Keegan-style, said that after thinking about it over the weekend he'd decided it was a job that had just come too soon for him, then that would be easiest all round. He could take his time, go off and work his way up the management ladder and maybe even take another crack at it somewhere down the line. Very few would hold the past year against him.

There is no real anger towards him, just sadness that he was allowed to put himself in harm's way like this.

But if he hangs on in there and says that he's no quitter and that he still thinks he can do the job, Delaney has to disabuse him of the notion soon. Not necessarily before the Croke Park games but not long afterwards.

The calls for the chief executive's head are misguided just now for many reasons, ranging from the vast amount he's done - and is doing - in reforming what was a joke of an association to the scary prospect of some of the nabobs below him beginning a bun fight over the taking of his place. But Delaney can't go on ignoring the fact that this mess is of his making. It's down to him to fix it, ride out the storm that will blow his way and get a line drawn under the whole unseemly affair. It'll take a few months and a few hundred thousand euro but it has to be done.

Fact. Not spin.

STAN'S TALE OF WOE - IN HIS OWN WORDS

1 March 2006 Republic of Ireland 3 Sweden 0, Lansdowne Road, Friendly Staunton: "A bit of a fairytale. . . The players' attitude was fantastic and they have set high standards, but hopefully they will go on from here. They are wonderful players."

24 May 2006 Republic of Ireland 0 Chile 1, Lansdowne Road, Friendly "We experimented but it didn't work out and we have learnt from it - we know what we can and can't do now. But there were a lot of positives."

16 August 2006 Republic of Ireland 0 Holland 4, Lansdowne Road, Friendly "It will be hard to pick them up but with a few club games under their belts their "tness will be better and they'll get their confidence back."

2 September 2006 Germany 1 Republic of Ireland 0, Stuttgart, Euro qualifier "I knew before the match what sort of pride and passion I would get.

The players have proved they have got a lot to offer. They were magnificent. There is a long way to go and the boys have shown they are up for it."

7 October 2006 Cyprus 5 Republic of Ireland 2, Nicosia, Euro qualifier "This job is certainly not beyond me, and I have full faith in myself and in the younger players.

Of course, I'm embarrassed. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I'm not afraid to say that, while the lads are also embarrassed."

11 October 2006 Republic of Ireland 1 Czech Republic 1, Lansdowne Road, Euro qualifier "I have to say the lads were magnificent and the crowd really got behind us. I am not giving up in the group yet."

15 November 2006 Rep Ireland 5 San Marino 0, Lansdowne Road, Euro qualifier "There is a long way to go and we have to keep battling to pick up points."

7 February 2007 San Marino 1 Rep Ireland 2, Serravalle, Euro qualifier "We have two big games to look forward to. San Marino were always going to improve as the group went on. The lads are disappointed with the performance but I am delighted to get the three points with two matches at Croke Park to come."