White Hart pain for Robbie?

ONLY by close of business this evening will we get a clearer picture of Robbie Keane’s future, but the rampant weekend speculation surrounding his future at Tottenham does not augur well.

Sunderland is the latest destination mooted, and for all Niall Quinn’s tourism talk, it’s quite the way removed from the Milans, Liverpools and Londons of this world. It was only a few weeks ago that Harry Redknapp seemed to put Keane’s future to bed, pledging: “Please God, he’ll still be here in February. Robbie’s here, he is the captain and very important to us, unless someone comes up with £50m or something for him...”

Sunderland aren’t offering the colour of that but Spurs clearly need to offload someone to bring in the other striker they are being continually linked with in this window. There has been a presumption that Russian attacker Roman Pavlyuchenko would be the one packing his bags, but with that increasingly unlikely to happen in the next few hours, Keane could, once again in his career, find himself the odd man out. Before Spurs cash in though, Redknapp might do well to have a chat with the last manager to prematurely dispense with Keane, Rafa Benitez.