O’Neill now wants break from Roy rumour mill

Martin O’Neill has expressed his delight at Roy Keane’s decision to stay on with Ireland and, rather than surrender to another round of speculation, is determined to leave the subject of a possible role for his assistant at Aston Villa "on the back burner" until the completion of the team’s short American tour.

O’Neill now wants break from Roy rumour mill

Before flying out from Dublin to New York yesterday, O’Neill suggested he would have no more to say about the Villa link until after Ireland’s second game in the States, against Portugal in New Jersey next Wednesday. And he betrayed a certain amount of exasperation that, when it comes to the media interest in Keane, just as soon as one line of inquiry is closed off, another opens.

“I don’t know what you really expect of me here,” he said after a morning training session in Gannon Park. “I answered the questions about Celtic and something else crops up again. I think you think I’m a soothsayer, that I can just predict the future. I wish I could predict the future, I might be in better shape than I am. Everything now at this minute is on the back burner in terms of speculation, all that sort of stuff. I don’t really want to continue on about this until we get back from the United States.”

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