Roy Keane: Villa exit shows he still has the capacity to surprise

The bookies were quick off the mark in the wake of Roy Keane’s surprise departure from Aston Villa with a variety of firms looking to generate interest in wagers on what job the Corkman might take on next.

It's an unlikely looking list consisting mainly of clubs he has already had connections with plus a handful of other outfits currently struggling in the Premier League and the 43 year-old will surely settle for a period of concentrating solely on his work with Martin O'Neill, something he seemed to be genuinely enjoying before deciding to take on an additional full-time role.

Taking that role, Keane admitted fairly candidly when he was first appointed by the FAI, was supposed to serve a number of purposes, primarily giving him the opportunity to learn from an experienced manager while restoring a little of a reputation that had become tarnished by the way his stints at Sunderland and Ipswich Town had ended

Progress was swift with Celtic feeling confident enough by the start of the summer to offer him the opportunity to succeed Neil Lennon, albeit on the sort of terms that suggested they still had reservations. But having opted at the time, wisely it seemed, against going for broke and leaving the Ireland role to work in Scotland, Keane presumably realises now that he made an error accepting the chance to juggle his FAI job with the Villa one he has quit barely four months after he took it on.

The club’s statement suggested that the Irishman’s desire to spend more time with his family was a factor and that would certainly be understandable enough although would be employers are bound to ask themselves quite how somebody with such extensive experience of the game could have misjudged the extent of the commitment he was making back in the summer and how, now, with Villa 16th in the table and just two points above the relegation zone after a run of two draws and six defeats in eight games, he has decided that the time is right to walk away.

The clear implication of Villa's statement was that Paul Lambert knew nothing of Keane's thinking until the pair spoke this morning but the Corkman seems impulsive enough that this might well indeed be the case. The other possibility is that there is something more going on here, a falling out behind the scenes or an event that has triggered his departure.

Keane has been involved in some small controversies during the past couple of months and it is certainly possible that something like his slightly throwaway comment about Jack Grealish and his father a couple of weeks back may have come back to bite him a bit. If so, it seems entirely plausible that the former Sunderland and Ipswich boss could, as he has done before, have reacted badly and opted to depart.

For the moment, at least, we simply don’t but those considering a wager might wonder if there’s a “none of the above any time soon” option at the end of those bookies’ lists. This latest chapter is Keane’s management career is unlikely to hasten the return to centre stage that he has consistently said he is interested in making at some point.