Heimir Hallgrimsson made no excuses as he admitted that his side were second best against England in tonight's UEFA Nations League defeat.
A baptism of fire for the new Ireland manager as his team were comprehensively beaten by Lee Carsley's charges at a packed Aviva Stadium.
Goals from Ireland old boys Declan Rice and Jack Grealish proved the difference between the sides as England came flying out of the blocks to effectively end the contest in the 26th minute as Grealish added the second.
It was cruise control for England after that, and while Ireland put in a much better second half performance, there was a sense that the group favourites were already working their way down through the gears.
"We have to admit that we were second best in this game," said Hallgrimsson, speaking at the post match press conference. "By far," he added for emphasis.
And the new manager was honest and frank as he quickly appraised the disappointing performance, especially in the first half when England really showed the gulf in class between the two sides.
"There were a lot of things. First and foremost, I think it's confidence in decision making, initiative – that was the big difference between the teams.
"I know the individual quality, we can talk about that, but when you are defending in a collective way, you need to take decisions, you need to believe in action and reaction and we were not good at this compared to England coming from a good Euros and from winning the Under-21s (European Championship).
"All their passes, all their movements, all their decisions were taken in the belief that they would be successful, whereas I felt we were always hesitating. It was individual actions instead of a collective."
Hallgrimsson will welcome the quick turnaround as his side go up against Greece on Tuesday night, again at Lansdowne Road, and he will be hoping the team can quickly learn from the performance and produce a better all-round outing.
"To be consistent now, we can use a lot from this game after they exposed our weaknesses," he said.
"We cannot always be negative, but show them (the players) how we can do things better. And how because we didn’t do this, this happened et cetera.
"So this will give us an opportunity to look at what we are doing. We can react in two ways. Restart and do something different and that won’t get you anywhere. We did try to do something, and it was a bit better in the second half, we tried to show initiative, we got a little bit higher and we were more compact.
"It’s probably easier when it is 2-0 and they are taking the foot off the gas a little bit. But we can learn from this, grow from this, and improve step by step instead of changing personnel or formation next game."
Hallgrimsson was particularly disappointed by the concession of the two goals, as he felt his side were way too open and suggested that you would be unhappy to lose a goal like the opener at schoolboy level.
"Given we had five at the back, we were too open if you see the first goal, a pass through the heart of the team should never happen at any level of football," he said.
"Internationally, you are unhappy. If you are playing youth football, you would be unhappy with a goal like this. The second goal (below) was a give and go, the 4-5-6, through us.
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"Again, it shouldn’t happen at this level. Again, because a lack of initiative, taking the steps, we conceded like we did so we need to improve on that."
But Hallgrimsson vowed not to dwell on the defeat and come out fighting against Greece in a game that he believes will be closer to the level of his Ireland team.
"This was a negative and we cannot carry that into the game against Greece," said Hallgrimsson.
"Greece have shown that they played good against Ireland so they have the upper hand so we need to change that.
"We can’t be crying until we play Greece. We need to energise and use every moment to be ready for that one."
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