Roy Keane will be assigned a new, more advanced role in central midfield when Mick McCarthy reveals his blueprint for success over Turkey in the opening instalment of the European Championship play-off at Lansdowne Road tomorrow.

Faced with the challenge of having to replace the suspended Mark Kinsella for the Dublin game, McCarthy is likely to nominate Lee Carsley for the task of partnering Keane in central midfield. The unwritten job spec for the old partnership gave Keane and Kinsella licence to get forward, but never in tandem. Now the manager is ready to revise it to deploy Keane in closer proximity to the front players, Robbie Keane and Niall Quinn, with Carsley, presumably, told to sit on Turkish danger man Sergen Yalcin. The prospect is unlikely to improve the sleep pattern of McCarthy's counterpart, Mustaf Denizli, already worried by Keane's return to full fitness and further alarmed by the captain's impressive strike rate for Manchester United. Not since his Nottingham Forest days, when opposing defenders hadn't yet been alerted to the potential of the new arrival from Cork, has his name appeared so often on the scoresheet. Now, listening to him hold court at the Ireland team hotel yesterday, there was at least one wistful reference to the time when, for all the eccentricities of Brian Clough, he had a freedom of movement which contrasts sharply with life under Alex Ferguson. He couldn't say precisely how his new splurge at Old Trafford compares with those heady days, and, even as the more statistical among us sought to enlighten him on the point, he dismissed it as irrelevant anyway. "Goalscoring doesn't greatly bother me," he said with the kind of detachment which specialist strikers will never know. "In football it's all about the team."

For him it's just about winning - and winning again! And, if that amounts to the most excruciating pressure of all, experience has fitted him well for the burden. "With Manchester United there's pressure to produce week in week out. There's pressure, too, when I come to play for Ireland, but obviously it's a nice pressure. "If people suggest that Ireland's performances are down to me, and results would have been different if I'd have played in games I missed, that's clearly rubbish. But of course I like to think I play an important role in the team." As a member of a Manchester United side whose coach was once stoned by Galatasaray supporters, the Ireland captain doesn't need to be convinced of the excesses which have earned Turkey a reputation as one of football's more inhospitable outposts. Yet he remains unshaken by the prospect. "I'm sure we'll face problems out there, just as I'm sure the press will hype those problems. But nobody got hurt when I was in Turkey and hopefully that will again be the case now.

"There's going to be a lot of hype and talk, but it's what happens on the pitch that counts. That's where the business is done, but before people get too hung up on what's going to happen in Turkey, let's do things in order and concentrate on winning the first game at Lansdowne Road." It's a measure of the player's fitness problems this year that he's played in only one of Ireland's last five European games. And then he had to be replaced after an hour in the 2-1 win over Yugoslavia. Since returning from his latest ailment, a recurring knee problem, he has played four games for Manchester United without suffering a reaction. It leads him to believe that he has at last distanced himself from an injury which at one point looked certain to put him in hospital again. "There have been no twinges and certainly no holding back in the tackle on my part," he said. "Physically I am great, and after the disappointment of missing out on some of the recent games it's a good feeling to be in that condition going into Saturday's match."

He wasn't prepared to dwell on Turkey's star attacking turn, Hakan Sukur, on the basis that if you concentrate on one player you invite retribution from the others. But, having dismissed Sukur in a couple of pithy sentences, he was prepared to sing the praises of Robbie Keane. In what could have been construed as a veiled attack on his gaffer at Old Trafford, he said: "I think Robbie is an outstanding player, and like everybody else I was surprised that clubs baulked at the original asking price of £6 million, which in today's market is quite cheap. Now Gordon Strachan is doing well from his investment."

On the involvement of Irish fans and the part they can play at Lansdowne Road, he said: "It's a two-way street. It's up to the players to get the crowd going, and then the fans can ensure that the pressure is kept on the Turks. "We have a very good record at Lansdowne Road. Now players and fans together can ensure that it stays that way and we take a lead with us to Turkey on Sunday morning."