Keane's tactics fail to move Rovers

ROY KEANE looked to be back in the managerial wilderness last night after turning down the chance to take charge of Turkish side Kasimpasa and failing to spark an approach from Championship side Blackburn Rovers.

Sources close to the Turkish Super League club revealed yesterday that Keane had informed them he would not be taking up the position with the Cork man reported to have told Kasimpasa officials that his wife Theresa did not want to move to Istanbul.

It remains uncertain, of course, whether Keane was ever remotely serious about the possibility of moving there himself and the suggestion that his wife’s reluctance to relocate was the basis for him turning the job down will do little for the sceptics’ view of events over the last few days.

The suspicion had been that the interest from Kasimpasa had handed Keane and his London-based adviser Michael Kennedy the opportunity to make the 41-year-old look sought-after again almost two years after he was sacked from his last job in management, with Championship side Ipswich Town.

It is highly questionable whether the former Manchester United skipper and Blackburn owners Venky’s could work successfully together.

However, Blackburn are in a strong position to challenge for promotion straight back to the Premier League this season and while he would be highly unlikely to simply apply for the job for fear of the damage that not getting it would do to his future prospects, the Keane camp apparently made it known while he was in Turkey that he was interested in talking to the club’s representatives about the possibility of succeeding Steve Kean, who resigned from the post last week.

Blackburn Rovers in turn seemed to suggest that they’d be happy to talk to him but they do not seem to have acted in a way that remotely suggested a sense of urgency on their part.

The Venky’s “global adviser” Shebby Singh has consistently sounded like a man who is happy to watch the CVs come rolling in and was apparently unmoved by the idea that the Irish man might be about to get away.

The club’s supporters were certainly unconcerned with a poll organised by local newspaper, the Lancashire Telegraph, recording just two votes out of more than 700 for Keane as the preferred candidate to fill the vacancy.

That’s less than one-fiftieth of the number received by Keane’s old adversary Mick McCarthy who finished a close second in the poll to current Blackpool boss Ian Holloway.

There is, of course, absolutely nothing to suggest that owners who steadfastly refused to sack Kean will take a blind bit of notice of what the fans want now but a little more evidence of public support surely wouldn’t have done Keane any harm.

Instead, he finds himself in an increasingly weak position.

Keane has devoted some of his time in the last year or so to media work specifically in order to maintain the sort of profile that would put him in the frame for decent management jobs.

If Blackburn do look elsewhere and he fails to land something else very quickly he will simply be increasingly viewed as that thing he hates so much, a pundit, and it will only get harder for him to find a way back to the game’s centre stage.