Robbie Keane

[Manny]

Robbie Keane is off to Celtic apparently, this recent christmas 'do' saga was the final nail in his coffin. All the spurs fans i know don't rate him at all now, they seem to think going to Liverpool has taken all his footballing ability.

 

I genuinely can't understand that. How the fuck did they expect to keep it secret? Did they really think somehow the news wouldn't get back across the Irish Sea back into the British tabloids? Are they fucking thick?

 

I've probably got the answer to that last one, mind.

[JohnnyH]

I live in the little town (called Malahide) where they went before the night club and they visited my local which is around the corner from me. I was there the next night and the bar manager was saying that a press lad with a camera arrived in and started taking shots so they surrounded him and smashed his camera. They then all dug deep and gave him a wedge to keep his mouth shut. Wouldn't be surprised if it came out anyway which will cause even more shite.

[manwiththestick]

If we had not signed Keane in the first place we would probably have won the league.

 

We played 15 games after he left and we won 12 of them, got 2 draws and lost 1.

That gives us an average of 2,53 points after Keane left, if we had the same average all season we would have finsihed with 96 points as Champions.

 

The only games when we lost points after Keane left was against City, Arsenal and Boro.

 

I dont think these were the games where we lost the league, the ones below where Keane started on the other hand might have had something to do with it.

 

Villa 0-0

Stoke 0-0

Fulham 0-0

West Ham 0-0

Everton 1-1

 

If only life played out like we wanted it to.

[TrimmTrabb]

I live in the little town (called Malahide) where they went before the night club and they visited my local which is around the corner from me. I was there the next night and the bar manager was saying that a press lad with a camera arrived in and started taking shots so they surrounded him and smashed his camera. They then all dug deep and gave him a wedge to keep his mouth shut. Wouldn't be surprised if it came out anyway which will cause even more shite.

 

Ye mate of mine was there and was taking a video of Lennon getting sick on himself and the bar staff freaked out at him. Pretty funny as Harry seemed to be only manager to make an issue of there not wanting a party. Maybe rafa isn't the only manager to come up with masterplans to force poor Keano out.

[theghost]

Cow's arse.

 

Banjo.

 

Yup.

[Paul]

How much longer would you have given a player of his age.

 

If it was up to me, about ten times as long as I'd have given Ryan Babel.

 

Is that why he struggled to put the ball in between them?

 

No. That was because he was messed about by his manager in terms of when and where he played.

[Catch22]

If it was up to me, about ten times as long as I'd have given Ryan Babel.

 

 

 

No. That was because he was messed about by his manager in terms of when and where he played.

 

The problem with the theory that Rafa messed Keane about is that if it were true, then elsewhere, without Rafa, he would be a glitterring success.

 

In fact, apart from with us, he has never played in the CL (!), was drummed out as quickly as a failiure when at another truly elite club & was never seriously wanted by any top team before or after leaving us.

 

Keane was not up to it at the highest level either mentally (ie/ David James) or skills-wise (ie/ Dean Saunders).

 

He was a stupid, short-sighted purchase but that is what people do when given short-term incentive structures which is why anyone making long-run decisions in any organization needs long-run contracts & Rafa had 12months left at the time.

 

He was given ample opportunity but was crap.

Trying to score a "Hollywood goal" at AM instead of just tapping it in (& it would have been his 2nd in that game so the confidence excuse doesn't wash) is exactly how he has played his entire career: at a smaller club, the times it doesn't come off are not in focus but when it does he is elevated up the running order on MotD

 

To get £15m for such a limited player was brilliant, although how much of that we owe to 'Arry we will never know.

[Zippy]

I think Keane knew virtually from day one that Rafa was unhappy to have him rather than Barry. I think that is a bad impression to give a new player when they are trying to bed in at a new club. I would have thought Keane would have done better if he felt his manager had full confidence in him. To me thats just common sense really.

 

I agree that for the role we seemed to want him for (behind the striker) he wasn't good enough but he was still the club's asset and should have been treated in a way that would try and get the best out of him.

[Catch22]

I think Keane knew virtually from day one that Rafa was unhappy to have him rather than Barry. I think that is a bad impression to give a new player when they are trying to bed in at a new club. I would have thought Keane would have done better if he felt his manager had full confidence in him. To me thats just common sense really.

 

I agree that for the role we seemed to want him for (behind the striker) he wasn't good enough but he was still the club's asset and should have been treated in a way that would try and get the best out of him.

 

If Keane's inadequate performance levels were due to Rafa not having any confidence in him, why has he never even appeared in a CL game for anyother manager bar Rafa?

[Zippy]

If Keane's inadequate performance levels were due to Rafa not having any confidence in him, why has he never even appeared in a CL game for anyother manager bar Rafa?

 

 

I didn't say that they were (at least not the sole reason) but I am certain that it didn't help and if they even effected his performance by 1% then that is a waste that didn't need to happen IMO.

 

 

As for your question the obvious answer is that none of his other clubs have played in the Champions League which for me has absolutely no bearing on his ability.

 

Was Arshavin not a good player in the years that he played in the UEFA Cup rather than the Champion's League?

 

Before Torres joined us how many Champion's League campaigns had he played in?

[LaurenceCrewe]

Keane is a player who NEEDS a partner up front

 

So many times at us he didn't. I agree some of the chances he missed were woeful but he started snatching too much when one came along as it appeared his confidence was down

 

Why he was ever played up front on his own is beyond me. Torres, Drogba, Adebayor are the types that can play that role perfectly. Keane is nothing like that type of player yet was still played to that type of system

[Catch22]

I didn't say that they were (at least not the sole reason) but I am certain that it didn't help and if they even effected his performance by 1% then that is a waste that didn't need to happen IMO.

 

 

As for your question the obvious answer is that none of his other clubs have played in the Champions League which for me has absolutely no bearing on his ability.

 

Was Arshavin not a good player in the years that he played in the UEFA Cup rather than the Champion's League?

 

Before Torres joined us how many Champion's League campaigns had he played in?

 

Torres was 23.

By 23, he was too good not to be playing in a regular CL side & so moved to one.

That backs up the Keane point- Noone wanted him until 28.

 

Arshavin is more interesting, i grant you, but the crucial difference is that he was operating in a far less visible enviroment.

 

Keane was playing every week in the most televised,media-centric League in the world (La Liga may be better but English is more widespread than Spanish & we have a much more adavanced media sector than Spain) yet noone wanted him

(As we saw in the summer, any contract he was on would have meant nothing in the face of a CL-approach with all their added paying power).

 

Rafa was the only CL-manager to ever play Keane at the highest level of the game.

No-one else ever has!

Actions speak far louder than words & in his actions, he showed far more confidene in Robbie than anyother manager before or since.

 

Indeed,if anything, he had too much confidence in him as the player is fundamentally flawed at the highest level.

 

Terrible buy & Rafa deserves criticism for that, but his handling of him was fine (if not, Keane would be brilliant under a different regime when he clearly isn't) & to get £15m for him was a very good cut.

 

Keane is Dean Saunders or David James- looks good until he gets to the very top level when he is totally not up to it.

[hobbit]

Who knows how Keane would've turned out if he stayed. We do know however that Steve Finnan was shit for us his first season but became a quality player for us.

[Zippy]

Torres was 23.

By 23, he was too good not to be playing in a regular CL side & so moved to one.

That backs up the Keane point- Noone wanted him until 28.

 

Arshavin is more interesting, i grant you, but the crucial difference is that he was operating in a far less visible enviroment.

 

Keane was playing every week in the most televised,media-centric League in the world (La Liga may be better but English is more widespread than Spanish & we have a much more adavanced media sector than Spain) yet noone wanted him

(As we saw in the summer, any contract he was on would have meant nothing in the face of a CL-approach with all their added paying power).

 

Rafa was the only CL-manager to ever play Keane at the highest level of the game.

No-one else ever has!

Actions speak far louder than words & in his actions, he showed far more confidene in Robbie than anyother manager before or since.

 

Indeed,if anything, he had too much confidence in him as the player is fundamentally flawed at the highest level.

 

Terrible buy & Rafa deserves criticism for that, but his handling of him was fine (if not, Keane would be brilliant under a different regime when he clearly isn't) & to get £15m for him was a very good cut.

 

Keane is Dean Saunders or David James- looks good until he gets to the very top level when he is totally not up to it.

 

The visibility argument doesn't hold any water and you know it any top manager/internatonal scout worth his salt would have known all about a player like Arshavin and if they didn't then they weren't doing their job properly IMO.

 

You are clearly an intelligent guy Catch but you appear very polarised in your thinking e.g. a player cant be good unless he has proved it in the Champion's League, if a player can get more wages elsewhere he will naturally leave etc.

 

Do you honestly think that Rafa treated Keane as good as he would any other signing?

 

Do you believe that a manager's treatment of a player has any influence on how they play?

[Catch22]

The visibility argument doesn't hold any water and you know it any top manager/internatonal scout worth his salt would have known all about a player like Arshavin and if they didn't then they weren't doing their job properly IMO.

 

You are clearly an intelligent guy Catch but you appear very polarised in your thinking e.g. a player cant be good unless he has proved it in the Champion's League, if a player can get more wages elsewhere he will naturally leave etc.

 

Do you honestly think that Rafa treated Keane as good as he would any other signing?

 

Do you believe that a manager's treatment of a player has any influence on how they play?

 

I admit the Arshavin visibility argument is weak.

 

I do admit to being polarised in the notion that a man would rather receive £50m in pay rather than £25m for identical jobs at very similar firms.

However to think otherwise is patently ridiculous & we would laugh if we found something similar on another club's fans' website.

 

Do you honestly think that Rafa treated Keane as good as he would any other signing?

Yes, totally.

Not because i think that Rafa is any sort of alturist.

Purely because their interests were completely in line: The better Keane played, the more games we won, the more personal glory & financial rewards Rafa got.

Incentives matter (the difficulty mosy of the time is to align the personal self-interest which always drives all of our actions with the corporate/society good. In this case, they were in line anyway which is very rare)

 

Do you believe that a manager's treatment of a player has any influence on how they play?[/

Yes, but thru tactics & training.

Confidence has almost no role (there is a lot of work from basketball where they show that notions of "hot" or "cold" streaks are nonsense: Better players make more shots & apparent runs come out of pure randomness (you toss a coin 1000 times & you will get apparent patterns)

Motivation has some but I belive most people are personally motivated: Every single successful one I have ever met has been, be it for financial reasons, ego,glory, revenge,jealousy or whatever.

I think motivation works woth the thick/fat kid at school to reach some of their potential but elite athletes or entrepreneurs or anything are 100% personally driven or they would not be at that elite level.

[Zippy]

I admit the Arshavin visibility argument is weak

 

I do admit to being polarised in the notion that a man would rather receive £50m in pay rather than £25m for identical jobs at very similar firms.

However to think otherwise is patently ridiculous & we would laugh if we found something similar on another club's fans' website.

 

Do you honestly think that Rafa treated Keane as good as he would any other signing?

Yes, totally.

Not because i think that Rafa is any sort of alturist.

Purely because their interests were completely in line: The better Keane played, the more games we won, the more personal glory & financial rewards Rafa got.

Incentives matter (the difficulty mosy of the time is to align the personal self-interest which always drives all of our actions with the corporate/society good. In this case, they were in line anyway which is very rare)

 

Do you believe that a manager's treatment of a player has any influence on how they play?[/

Yes, but thru tactics & training.

Confidence has almost no role (there is a lot of work from basketball where they show that notions of "hot" or "cold" streaks are nonsense: Better players make more shots & apparent runs come out of pure randomness (you toss a coin 1000 times & you will get apparent patterns)

Motivation has some but I belive most people are personally motivated: Every single successful one I have ever met has been, be it for financial reasons, ego,glory, revenge,jealousy or whatever.

I think motivation works woth the thick/fat kid at school to reach some of their potential but elite athletes or entrepreneurs or anything are 100% personally driven or they would not be at that elite level.

 

 

 

Fair play for admitting the Arshavin admission is weak.

 

As for the wages thing there is some truth in that and many players do do that but I can think of plenty of players who can move to similar clubs and earn much more but dont for example Torres, Gerrard, Rooney, Messi, Fabregas etc etc

 

As for not believing in confidence as a factor I am shocked that you believe that as it goes against pretty much every opinion I have ever heard by top sportsmen and managers on the matter.

[Catch22]

On confidence

 

"Start with a phenomenon that nearly everyone both accepts and considers well understood—"hot hands" in basketball. Now and then, someone just gets hot, and can't be stopped. Basket after basket falls in—or out as with "cold hands," when a man can't buy a bucket for love or money (choose your cliché). The reason for this phenomenon is clear enough; it lies embodied in the maxim: "When you're hot, you're hot; and when you're not, you're not." You get that touch, build confidence; all nervousness fades, you find your rhythm; swish, swish, swish. Or you miss a few, get rattled, endure the booing, experience despair; hands start shaking and you realize that you shoulda stood in bed.

 

Everybody knows about hot hands. The only problem is that no such phenomenon exists. The Stanford psychologist Amos Tversky studied every basket made by the Philadelphia 76ers for more than a season. He found, first of all, that probabilities of making a second basket did not rise following a successful shot. Moreover, the number of "runs," or baskets in succession, was no greater than what a standard random, or coin-tossing, model would predict. (If the chance of making each basket is 0.5, for example, a reasonable value for good shooters, five hits in a row will occur, on average, once in thirty-two sequences—just as you can expect to toss five successive heads about once in thirty-two times, or 0.55.)

 

Of course Larry Bird, the great forward of the Boston Celtics, will have more sequences of five than Joe Airball—but not because he has greater will or gets in that magic rhythm more often. Larry has longer runs because his average success rate is so much higher, and random models predict more frequent and longer sequences. If Larry shoots field goals at 0.6 probability of success, he will get five in a row about once every thirteen sequences (0.65). If Joe, by contrast, shoots only 0.3, he will get his five straight only about once in 412 times. In other words, we need no special explanation for the apparent pattern of long runs. There is no ineffable "causality of circumstance" (if I may call it that), no definite reason born of the particulars that make for heroic myths—courage in the clinch, strength in adversity, etc. You only have to know a person's ordinary play in order to predict his sequences. (I rather suspect that we are convinced of the contrary not only because we need myths so badly, but also because we remember the successes and simply allow the failures to fade from memory. More on this later.)"

 

from a famous Stephen Jay Gould article in the NYTimes

The Streak of Streaks - The New York Review of Books

 

I know of no research since which has fundentally disputed his central point:

What we call "confidence" or "form" is putting patterns into a random process that would also exist with coins.

If a fair dice is rolled 1000's of times it will have runs of 5 6's or 5 1's... It is an inanimite dice but the process is humans is called "form" or "out-of-form".

[Royal Family]

Just bumping this one - I read today that keane has been subbed in 12 out of 15 starts this season; has been a sub twice; and an unused sub on the bench 5 times this year. So this season he has finished a lower proportion of games than he did under Rafa last season, AND been unused more often. Yet Rafa got SO much stick for how Keane was treated - "horribly", "disgracefully", "unfair" were all used on these message boards, and the irish Reds were particularly vociferous. The media of course had a field day. So why is Redknapp immune from criticism whilst our manager was slaughtered, especially by our own, for his "treatment" of Keane.

 

I think it is certainly time for even Keane's fiercest supporters to admit that he just isn't good enough. Rafa's mstake was buying him in the first place - a stupid, short-sighted purchase, which just shows how poor our scouting system is, especially at scouting Premiership players.

[higgo]

Keane was a good buy but became a victim of the political shenanigans that was going on behind the scenes. He fitted in really well at the start of the season and we reaped the rewards with an excellent run of wins before the spotlight on him became intolerable and something had to give. I'd love to have him in the squad now.

[Royal Family]

Keane was a good buy but became a victim of the political shenanigans that was going on behind the scenes. He fitted in really well at the start of the season and we reaped the rewards with an excellent run of wins before the spotlight on him became intolerable and something had to give. I'd love to have him in the squad now.

 

i agree about the political shenanigans at our club, but why is redknapp immune from accusations of "shenanigans" when Keane is being treated exactly the same? Fact is that Keane is a busted flush, both for Ireland and in the Premiership, and indeed I'd say he has been for many years: without doubt one of the most overrated players of recent times, given how much money has been spent on him throughout his career. He's also hugely unprofessional and has the wrong mentality to be a top player - he proved that here, and has done the same since going back to Spurs, most notably over the christmas party.

[Code]

Like I said when we bought him, not good enough and needs too many chances to get his goals, it was obvious he would not get enough of these chances playing for us with Rafa`s tactics and set up.

[Iantn]

Like I said when we bought him, not good enough and needs too many chances to get his goals, it was obvious he would not get enough of these chances playing for us under Rafa`s tactics.

 

You obviously missed all his glorious missed chances last season then. Not shocking as you was probably too busy marking down exactly where Kuyt was every 2 seconds.

[El Rojo]

Just bumping this one - I read today that keane has been subbed in 12 out of 15 starts this season; has been a sub twice; and an unused sub on the bench 5 times this year. So this season he has finished a lower proportion of games than he did under Rafa last season, AND been unused more often. Yet Rafa got SO much stick for how Keane was treated - "horribly", "disgracefully", "unfair" were all used on these message boards, and the irish Reds were particularly vociferous. The media of course had a field day. So why is Redknapp immune from criticism whilst our manager was slaughtered, especially by our own, for his "treatment" of Keane.

 

I think it is certainly time for even Keane's fiercest supporters to admit that he just isn't good enough. Rafa's mstake was buying him in the first place - a stupid, short-sighted purchase, which ridicules our scouting system.

 

That's bollocks though. Most Irish fans with half a clue - particularly on here if you bother to check the threads - had seen him playing often enough to be a lot less enthusiastic about his signing than the majority who only remembered him turning us over against Spurs a few times.

 

He would have been a great signing for us when we were first linked with him under Houllier eight years earlier for a third of the price when he could have changed his game under the right coaching.

 

For £20m, it was a crazy, crazy signing. The wrong player at the wrong time. And disappointingly for him, the move back to Spurs has been a disaster too.

 

All that said, the manager's treatment of him was undeniably shabby during his time here and he could have made better use of him even in those six months.

[Iantn]

So why is Redknapp immune from criticism whilst our manager was slaughtered,.

 

I think it's due to Spurs having good old 'Arry as their manager and we've got that fuckin foreigner Benitez as ours.

 

Only none-British managers who win the league are considered good enough to be involved in this country.

[istvankozma]

That's bollocks though. Most Irish fans with half a clue - particularly on here if you bother to check the threads - had seen him playing often enough to be a lot less enthusiastic about his signing than the majority who only remembered him turning us over against Spurs a few times.

 

He would have been a great signing for us when we were first linked with him under Houllier eight years earlier for a third of the price when he could have changed his game under the right coaching.

 

For £20m, it was a crazy, crazy signing. The wrong player at the wrong time. And disappointingly for him, the move back to Spurs has been a disaster too.

 

All that said, the manager's treatment of him was undeniably shabby during his time here and he could have made better use of him even in those six months.

 

Most were very anxious about the signing because we knew how badly wrong it was likely to go, and had seen enough of the windmill arms to know we would be the ones gettin shit over it too.