Roy Keane: O’Neill is up there with Clough and Fergie

Roy Keane has heaped high praise on Martin O’Neill, saying he has no hesitation about mentioning him in the same breath as managerial greats Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough.

“I certainly don’t think we could be in better hands going into the next week than with Martin as the manager,” said Keane on the second day of Ireland’s build-up to the World Cup play-off against Denmark. “The key to the really top managers — and I go back to the managers I worked with — is saying the right thing at the right time. Obviously that will not be through the media but at a team talk, maybe in the dressing room, maybe at half-time, pre-match, or be it in a hotel.

“And I know that if I was a player, I’d like Martin’s messages. Of course you are going to say that I have to say that because I work with him. But, no, I always try to picture myself as a player and if I was a player and these were the messages that I was getting from the manager, I would be going ‘yeah, I get that’.”