Jewell: Keane to bounce back from ’Swich off

NEW Ipswich Town boss Paul Jewell has backed his predecessor Roy Keane to go on to be a success in management despite last week’s sacking by the Championship club.

The 46-year-old was confirmed as the Tractor Boys’ new chief yesterday, having signed a contract until 2013.

Jewell says he hasn’t spoken to the former Ireland skipper, who was relieved of his duties last Thursday after 20 months at Portman Road, but expects him to bounce back.

“I haven’t had any contact with Roy Keane. I understand it’s a difficult time when you lose the job and I have great respect for Roy Keane, both as a player and a man. I don’t know him that well, but as a manager he did a fine job at Sunderland.

“For whatever reasons things didn’t work out here but he’ll go on to other things and will I’m sure be very successful,” he said.

Once touted as a potential Republic of Ireland manager, the ex-Bradford, Sheffield Wednesday, Wigan and Derby boss says he has sympathy with Keane, having been in a similar position himself in the past.

“I’m not here to say that Roy Keane failed at Ipswich. It’s always hard when a manager loses his job, it’s happened to a lot of us. Great respect has to be paid to Roy Keane, certainly from my point of view.”

Jewell says he learnt of Ipswich’s interest when owner and chairman Marcus Evans called him and asked him over to his multi-national hospitality and conferencing business headquarters in Dublin.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” said the Liverpudlian. “It was about a quarter-to-10 on Thursday evening and the owner of Ipswich was on the phone. He said he had sadly decided to part company with Roy and would I be interested, and to get on a plane to Dublin the next day if I was. It really was as quick as that.

“I got the phone call on Thursday evening from the owner, I met him Ireland on Friday and I had more meetings with chief executive Simon Clegg on Friday and Saturday. It’s gone really, really quick.”

Jewell, who wasn’t at Stamford Bridge for the 7-0 thrashing by Chelsea, signed his contract on Sunday night.

He says that as he’s yet to meet the players, he will be leaving picking the team for tomorrow night’s Carling Cup semi-final home first leg against Arsenal to Keane’s coaches Ian McParland and Tony Loughlan.

“I’ve not even met the players or the staff yet, it’s been a real whirlwind and I don’t want to cause a distraction.

“I think it’d be in the best interests of the team to let the two lads run the game on Wednesday because they know the players better than I do.

And come Thursday morning, we’ll be taking over.”

Over the weekend, Ipswich’s Northern Irish defender Gareth McAuley suggested that some players weren’t too disappointed to see the back of Keane, something Jewell says is inevitably going to happen at any football club.

“Whenever a manager goes, not everyone is going to be unhappy and not everyone’s going to be happy,” he said.

“When you pick the team, 11 people think you’ve made the right decision, the others think you’ve made the wrong one. You’re never going to please everybody all the time.”

Jewell, who says he has made tentative moves towards bringing in his own backroom staff with his previous right-hand man Chris Hutchings having been sacked by Walsall last week, says it will be no simple task taking 19th-placed Ipswich back into the Premier League.

Walsall sacked manager Hutchings and his assistant Martin O’Connor as The Saddlers were left rock bottom of League One.

But he could fit the bill as part of the backroom staff at Portman Road with new manager Jewell.

“There are a lot of things in place here which can give us an opportunity to do that, but looking at the division, there are an awful lot of big clubs in the Championship with the same expectations as Ipswich,” said Jewell yesterday.

“It’s a very tough league to get out of, but I think we’ve got a lot of good players here, we just need to try and get them to believe in themselves, that’s the first objective.”