Martin O’Neill ‘delighted’ Roy Keane chose Ireland over Aston Villa

Ireland boss Martin O'Neill has expressed his "delight" over assistant manager Roy Keane opting to leave his position as Paul Lambert's number two at Aston Villa to concentrate on his commitments with the national side.

Keane announced his resignation from the Villa job with immediate effect this morning, saying the balancing of commitments working with both O’Neill and Lambert had become too much.

In a statement on the FAI website O'Neill said: "We had a brief discussion about the issue at the last international get together and I think he was more concerned about having that full commitment to the Aston Villa club job and to ourselves.

“I’ve said in the past, and it’s worth reiterating, I never had a problem whatsoever about his commitment to the Republic of Ireland.

“Everything that I was hoping he would bring to the table, for want of a better word, I thought he did do - commitment, enthusiasm that strong desire that we know he possesses. All of those things have been absolutely no problem whatsoever.

“I think that what happened is that he didn’t have any summer holiday. He went straight from international duty with us in America to the job at Aston Villa. I think eventually those things maybe catch up with you, either one side of Christmas or the other.

“But I think he himself was more concerned about worrying about the commitment, again I didn’t have a problem with it.

“Roy being the perfectionist that he is, I think he wanted to give everything to every single cause but I think maybe (he wants) just a little bit of family time now, at the minute perhaps that’s something missing.

“I’m not his keeper, far from it, and I think that the number of games that he was covering for us still was pretty decent. In matches that maybe didn’t concern Aston Villa he would be there midweek. So he’s always had that commitment and I didn’t really see that waning.

“I’m not party to his everyday involvement at Aston Villa but I can only imagine Roy would be nothing else but 100 per cent committed to it. But again his role here with the ROI has been excellent and he’s fulfilled all the points that I thought that he would do.

“But he has decided to make the choice and naturally I’m delighted that the ROI has been his first choice.”