Martin O'Neill may have been happy enough to play ball as the press corps played on the possibility of Roy Keane returning to Celtic as manager for all it was worth, but the Corkman himself was rather less eager to please yesterday.
“But I’ve got a job,” he kept repeating, as the more determined reporters present sought to find a way around his resistance, until, “But say you didn’t?” earned the first Keano “what-are-you-lot-like?” glare of the day.
It wasn’t to be the last.
“Is it the most stupid question I’ve heard in a long time?” O’Neill’s assistant wondered aloud, when somebody inquired as to whether new manager Louis van Gaal had a big rebuilding job to do at Manchester United. It seemed unnecessarily harsh given the rather run of the mill nature of the question, but “say you didn’t?” guy must have been secretly relieved.
Keane almost seemed to be enjoying himself at times. The Celtic pursuit had started with "speculation" linking him to the job, which prompted him to humorously lament that when he was out of work over the last couple of years nobody seemed to bother to speculate about him going anywhere, whereas now that he has a job. Pay cut It ended with a joke about not taking a pay cut, before a question about whether he intended going to a League of Ireland match last night drew a response delivered in a way that seemed to suggest he suspected the journalist's motive for asking.
“Not if stays raining like this I’m not,” he eventually added with a smile, before acknowledging that, yeah, he was thinking of heading out to the Carlisle Grounds to see Cork City play.
It will be quite a contrast between that and the Stadium of Light in Lisbon, where he will be this evening for the Champions League final. Asked about the prospect of missing a day’s training in order to do his television work, he was fairly frank: “Yeah,” he said, “it’s not ideal but it won’t happen again.”
Another thing that won’t be happening anytime soon, if the long-time United star is to be believed, is James McCarthy heading to Old Trafford. The story was floated without much by way of supporting evidence in the British media yesterday, and Keane seemed fairly intent on sinking it before lunchtime.
“He’s only been at Everton two minutes,” he said firmly. “He’s obviously making good progress, but I’m pretty sure that with Manchester United there’ll be lots talk about players going there at the moment, but James is at a good club in Everton. He’s had a decent couple of seasons and if he keeps progressing who knows, but I’m sure he’s happy where he is.”
Keane seems happy where he is too and happiest in front of the press when talking about the day-to-day business of helping to run this Ireland team.
After two days on the sidelines, David Meyler, he said, will have to take a significant part in training today if he is to have any chance of featuring against Turkey tomorrow night, but Anthony Pilkington sounded like a better bet to feature despite having been nursed through yesterday's session. Run of games "He's a good player," said Keane. "The problem for Anthony is getting that run of games under his belt, getting his fitness levels up. It seems to be stop, start, but from what we've seen of him, he's obviously a talented boy. We have to get him up to speed with his fitness, which seems to be an ongoing problem. But he's clearly a talented kid and you need a goal threat. You need goals from your midfielders.
“There’s been a lot of pressure on Robbie, I suppose, over the last 10 years to get the goals and you need other lads to contribute, particularly your midfielders. If you’re playing at a certain level, you should have a goal in your locker. We need more of our lads to do that, to help out the likes of Robbie and Shane.”
Whether anyone will step up on that front against a capable though scarcely outstanding Turkey team remains to be seen, but Keane insists he is expecting a difficult night. “It will be a tough test, as they are a top, top team and they have some quality players. It is a tough game. People say there are no easy games in football – well there are, you can have one or two. But Turkey certainly don’t fall into that category. We were disappointed with the result against Serbia and we want to bounce back. A win and a good performance would be nice.”
The visitors, who came fourth in the world qualification group behind the Netherlands, Romania and Hungary bring a squad drawn mainly from their own league and will be without their skipper, Atletico Madrid midfielder Arda Turan, who is unlikely to make quite such an effort as Keane to get from Lisbon to Dublin.
