Robbie Keane

[irishfan86]

True.. But the partnership has to be acknowledged.

I still think Doyle and him have potential as a very good front pair.

I think they're too short to play together. Doyle can play with anyone and be effective, but Keane really needs a target man, which Doyle is not.

He's good in the air for his size, but he's not dominant enough to make up for Robbie's aerial anonymity.

[Stuttgart88]

I'm glad he had a poor game (in front of goal anyway) at Arsenal!

His penalty record is superb so no recriminations there - if a 6 foot 4 keeper guesses right (and steps up of his line early) there's every chnace it'll be saved. Good goalkeeping rtaher than a bad penalty. The volley was careless but on another day would have gone in off the bar and he'd have been a hero. As Neil pointed out on the other thread, Robbie's flick to Berbnatov was superb and Berbatov gets all the plaudits later despite the deflection making the goal.

I still see no reason why Doyle and Keane can't click. It all boils down to our midfield again in my opinion.

[OwlsFan]

He missed another one yesterday against Reading so that might be the end of his peno taking for a while.

[Hibernian]

His record for Spurs is impressive but against the big teams this is not the case. His record against Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal are not that great he can score for fun against the likes of Fulham but when it really matters he just does not put them away.

[NeilMcD]

Robbie Keane scored more Premiership goals this year than any other player.

[tetsujin1979]

His record for Spurs is impressive but against the big teams this is not the case. His record against Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal are not that great he can score for fun against the likes of Fulham but when it really matters he just does not put them away.
Very few strikers score regularly against Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal. Fowler had a decent record against Arsenal alright, but that's the only one that comes to mind.

[Hibernian]

Very few strikers score regularly against Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal. Fowler had a decent record against Arsenal alright, but that's the only one that comes to mind.

Fowler did score a few goals I can rememeber against Man Utd and some of them were important. Rememebr he scored one (if not two) on Cantona's return match.

Just cause Keane is top scorer does not mean anything at the moment.

At end of day he has not done it for Ireland and that's not good enough. When it's up against the big boys he's not good enough

[gustavo]

Jeez I'd love to see how many goals a striker who "could do it" for us would get. I'd imagine that would make him our top goalscorer of all time or something like that.

[geysir]

Owls, I agree with what you probably wrote.

[TheJamaicanP.M.]

His record against Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal are not that great he can score for fun against the likes of Fulham but when it really matters he just does not put them away.

His record against Arsenal is impressive, even going back to the days when he was at Coventry. I can't think of too many players that have a good scoring record against Man U.

[Stuttgart88]

I still think Doyle and him have potential as a very good front pair.Me too, if we have our best players fit, a competitive midfield and a manager who puts out a well balanced team.

Keane's role in setting up chances recently has to be acknowledged too.

I think he's lost weight under Ramos, or at lesat looks better conditioned than under Jol. He definitely looks lighter and slimmer around the waist (as do Tom Huddlestone and fat boy Paul Robinson).

[OwlsFan]

Owls, I agree with what you probably wrote.


:D:D Sometimes you just get fed up with the nonsense that he must score against "top teams", otherwise he's useless. I was launching in to a rant and then gave up ;)

[jebus]

When it's up against the big boys he's not good enough

Cristiano Ronaldo goes missing against the big boys on a consistent basis too, as did Thierry Henry in the last 2-3 years of his career, don't see anyone thinking less of them for it

[Stuttgart88]

Berbatov's 4 goals on Saturday are to be erased from the record books because they were against Reading.

Anyway didn't Robbie score at Anfield recently? Twice?

[OwlsFan]

Robbie came on as a sub late in the second half against Villa and did very well. Certainly revitalised Spurs as an attacking force. O'Hara looked good also, except when marking 6ft 3 centre halves at corners :p

[tetsujin1979]

Robbie came on as a sub late in the second half against Villa and did very well. Certainly revitalised Spurs as an attacking force. O'Hara looked good also, except when marking 6ft 3 centre halves at corners :p
According to some reports I've read today, he's only about 5"11, so it's hardly his fault! With all the goals Laursen has scored this season, you'd think Ramos would have instructed someone taller to mark him tighter from set pieces

[Stuttgart88]

Spurs are a shambles defending set pieces at the moment.

Where would Chelsea & Villa be without set piece goals?

Robbie was a big part of the move that led to Defoe's goal.

[Noelys Guitar]

keane having a stormer against Arsenal. Made the goal and is giving the Arsenal defense the runaround.

[tetsujin1979]

Off the ball running is supreme, Djourou and Senderos don't know how to mark him!

[lofty9]

Robbie is playing some great stuff recently. He seems to excel running off the shoulders of defenders instead of having to drop off to get the ball, like he does a lot for Ireland. I haven't seen him play this type of role since he was banging in big Quinns flick ons.

It helps when he has a top class partner too though, with Bebatov he has the perfect foil.

[NeilMcD]

Keane is class act simple as that, this country loves to knock the people that are actualy talented Roy Keane, Bono, The Edge, and many many more

[Greenforever]

Keane is class act simple as that, this country loves to knock the people that are actualy talented Roy Keane, Bono, The Edge, and many many more

Makes me fell better when people knock me:D agreed apart from the fact hes an arrogant ****** hes a brilliant footballer, (our top goalscorer ever) and that's all i care

[NeilMcD]

Often you will find that people who are high achievers are tossers or have personality issues its the way of the world.

[Greenforever]

Often you will find that people who are high achievers are tossers or have personality issues its the way of the world.


Ive often been called a tosser and I have personality issues does this make me a high achiever?:D

[eekers]

Keane is class act simple as that, this country loves to knock the people that are actualy talented Roy Keane, Bono, The Edge, and many many more

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY3NxPMYaAw

[geysir]

Robbie is playing some great stuff recently. He seems to excel running off the shoulders of defenders instead of having to drop off to get the ball, like he does a lot for Ireland. I haven't seen him play this type of role since he was banging in big Quinns flick ons.

It helps when he has a top class partner too though, with Bebatov he has the perfect foil.
Hoddle knew to play Robbie like that, running off the last line of defence and he had a good partner in Sherringham.
It looks to me that Berbatov has to be told by Robbie a lot of the time where to lay off the ball.

[NeilMcD]

Not at all, have you ever seen Berbatove when playing with Defoe, he goes mad and he tells him what to do etc and it drives him nuts cause Defoe is clueless and I would say he is a nightmare to play with unless you were Niall Quinn or Drogba or Kenwyne Jones or something. Berbatove and Keane have a great footballing partnership because they are both clever players and Keane in my opinion is the better player over the last year than Berbatov and his attitude has been much better too.

[kingdom hoop]

Ive often been called a tosser and I have personality issues does this make me a high achiever?:D

Word of advice mate, I'd give up the coke if you're not sure it even gets you high. :D

[jmurphyc]

It's good to see him continue to play so well. It amazes me how much credit Berbatov gets when Robbie is outplaying him (and is also more consistent). Hopefully if we can get a decent manager in he can start producing effectively for Ireland.

[Dr. Ogba]

It's good to see him continue to play so well. It amazes me how much credit Berbatov gets when Robbie is outplaying him (and is also more consistent). Hopefully if we can get a decent manager in he can start producing effectively for Ireland.

yeah you would think that Sky are getting a cut of any possible Berbatov transfer the way they were gushing on about him last night. Fact of the matter is, that as a combination, Keane and Berbatov work extremely well together and the media don't seem to identify this fact at all. I would love to see the stats of how Berbatov has performed for Spurs alongside Keane against how he has done beside Defoe/Bent.....would any of the statisticians amongst us have that sort of info?

[Sligo Hornet]

yeah you would think that Sky are getting a cut of any possible Berbatov transfer the way they were gushing on about him last night. Fact of the matter is, that as a combination, Keane and Berbatov work extremely well together and the media don't seem to identify this fact at all. I would love to see the stats of how Berbatov has performed for Spurs alongside Keane against how he has done beside Defoe/Bent.....would any of the statisticians amongst us have that sort of info?

Totally agree Doc!........slightly off topic...what did you think of Defoe's new haircut?:eek:....do you think his hairdresser had a siezure mid way through?

[Stuttgart88]

yeah you would think that Sky are getting a cut of any possible Berbatov transfer the way they were gushing on about him last night. Fact of the matter is, that as a combination, Keane and Berbatov work extremely well together and the media don't seem to identify this fact at all. I would love to see the stats of how Berbatov has performed for Spurs alongside Keane against how he has done beside Defoe/Bent.....would any of the statisticians amongst us have that sort of info?Yep, it was all about Berbatov last night. Drove me mad. Mind, as an Arsenal fan the whole game drove me mad too!

Keane has lost weight, looks miles fitter than before.

[OwlsFan]

Great performance by Keane and shows what he can do when he has the service.

Wouldn't worry too much about the commentary. Alan Parry habitually uses "brilliant" for anything slightly above normal and Ray Wilkins wasn't far behind last night. I thought it was a strange decision to take off Malbranque (and they scored shortly afterwards). Berbatov was excellent but for me our Robbie was motm.

I wish he would stop pointing all the time though :o

[eirebhoy]

I think when you take Keane out of the Spurs team you take most of the life out of their team. As someone else said, replace Keane with Defoe and you also get a very frustrated Berbatov.

"He is a phenomenon.

"He is ready to play and he has some incredible moves in training, especially when it comes to dribbling.

"He's more or less in my position and I can tell you that he has just as good a chance as me of playing."

That was Seedorf talking 7 years ago. Keane has improved every season since then. It's interesting that Seedorf regarded him as an attacking midfielder then.

[Stuttgart88]

Strikers may come and go but Keane is a constant for Spurs

David Hytner
Friday January 18, 2008
The Guardian

When Dimitar Berbatov was dominating the headlines at the beginning of the month, after his agent's announcement that he wanted a move to a bigger club, one of the talking points concerned how his Tottenham Hotspur team-mates would subsequently regard him.

The opinion of one dressing-room insider was illuminating. "It will be interesting to see what Robbie Keane has to say," said the source. "Robbie is hugely influential and the others take their lead from him."

The circle has turned for Keane and the Dubliner has not only become the key figure on the playing staff but has emerged as the one constant in the club's tale of four strikers. He cannot have said anything incendiary about Berbatov and the spotlight has drifted away from the Bulgarian - his future will be back on the agenda in the summer but meanwhile those of Jermain Defoe and Darren Bent continue to be debated. Defoe says that the manager, Juande Ramos, is content to let him leave and the interest from Aston Villa beats louder and louder. Portsmouth, too, and Newcastle would like to take him. Bent, meanwhile, has not found form since his £16.5m summer arrival from Charlton Athletic and has had to suffer "waste of money" whispers.
Ramos has seen little persuasive from him and in the background the sporting director, Damien Comolli, has been looking for a new striker. He has had discussions about Fred, the Brazilian international at Lyon, only for the player to declare yesterday that he was staying put.

Keane in the past has had to live with question marks over his Tottenham future. He has had to battle for his place and during his spells out of the team he might have been tempted elsewhere. But he has endured and after a spectacular calendar year in 2007, when he scored 31 goals for the club in all competitions, he has challenged a clutch of perceptions.

When he arrived at White Hart Lane he had played for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Coventry, Internazionale and Leeds inside four years. But that was the summer of 2002. Keane is a nomad no more.

He is also becoming recognised as a goalscorer rather than a scorer of great goals. Although the epithet of "prolific" has not yet attached itself, he has consistently been the club's leading Premier League scorer and he finished last season with 22 goals in all competitions. He has 15 so far this time out, to promise an even greater return, and he is now only one short of his century for the club. He brushes aside talk of personal landmarks, though, to see the bigger picture.

"The cups are very important but so is the Premier League because we want to get into the Uefa Cup [via league position] and that is still not out of our reach by any means," he said. "We proved that over the last couple of years."

Keane has proved himself time and again and, with uncertainty in the air, Ramos can be thankful that he intends to keep doing so.

[shakermaker1982]

Keane the enigma

By James Lawton
Friday January 18 2008


Would it be wickedly sardonic of Roy Keane to speculate on how much easier his task would be this weekend if one of the chief threats to his Sunderland relegation fighters at White Hart Lane was wearing a green rather than a white shirt?


Probably, but then nobody does it better than Keano and surely it is also true that few followers of the Republic of Ireland have failed to notice the performance gulf which separates his namesake Robbie of Spurs from the one who has performed for so long for the national team.

We have a cluster of contrasts and ironies here. While Roy railed against what he considered the inadequacies of Ireland's big-match preparations, his form for his country was as seamlessly committed as it was for his paymasters Manchester United. This Keane knew only one way to play whenever he played, and the colour of his shirt was plainly incidental.

Yes, he performed the most gut-wrenching act of insurrection before World Cup 2002, but it was Roy Keane who carried Ireland there -- and virtually on one leg in the decisive qualifier against the Netherlands.

The same cannot quite be said for the hero of Spurs, the selfless, fiercely scuffling scorer Robbie, who is now just one short of his 100th goal for Tottenham.

Of course, you have to give unto Robbie what is his and this most significantly includes the fact that he has made an imperishable mark on Irish football with his record tally of 32 goals in 78 international games, which is after all in the taller foothills of Bobby Charlton's legendary total of 49 for England in 106 appearances. But then you know what they say about statistics.

Broke

Robbie Keane is not for Ireland what he has been, for at least some of the time, for a succession of clubs from when he broke the British transfer record of £6m for a teenager when moving from Wolves to Coventry, and the growing suspicion at the approach of the dawn of a new Irish regime is that he is not likely to be.

At 27, Robbie Keane is perhaps an extraordinary enigma, a bright, self-motivated pro who has found his way, albeit through a few thickets of confusion, to a consistently high-impact level of performance in the Premier League but who cannot, despite the worthiest of declarations, find the same passion for his country.

Or maybe the truth is rather more brutal. Maybe Robbie Keane simply remembers most vividly where his richest butter is spread. Certainly, his record and current form for Spurs sharply contrasts with his often insipid contribution to the failed regime of Steve Staunton. For the tenderfoot international coach Staunton, Keane seemed like a ready-made leader, a man upon whom to bestow both the captaincy and untouchable status. Keane sailed on beyond inquest or correction, however poor the Irish team performance.

Yet for Spurs he has resembled a one-man improvement programme. Perhaps he simply responded well to an authority figure, a status that was sadly beyond the tyro Staunton.

Martin Jol had it before the Tottenham board cut the ground from under his feet -- and he pushed Keane to his most valuable time of self-examination in the spring of 2005 when imposing a £10,000 fine and banishment to reserve team training. The betting had to be on Keane packing his bags and adding another, perhaps sharply less prestigious club to his list of ultimately frustrated employers.

Instead, Keane of course re-invented himself. He became integral to the spirit -- and the scoring potential -- of Spurs. He overtook Jermain Defoe, who was once heralded as the natural successor to Michael Owen in the England team and, more recently, he has fought off the expensive challenge of another England player, Darren Bent. He is the natural foil for the remarkably gifted Dimitar Berbatov and a potent weapon in his own right, as he proved with his 15th goal of the season in the mid-week victory at Reading, which set up a fourth Round FA Cup visit to Old Trafford.

Keane had only words for the team after his latest splash of headlines. "As a striker you are judged on getting goals and it is always important to score and get your confidence up," he said. "I've been lucky enough to score a few this season, but it is not about me, it is about the team."

That would have sounded a lot more platitudinous if you didn't remember the testament of former Spurs player Edgar Davids, the ferociously committed Dutch midfielder.

Genuine

Davids claimed that it was the passions aroused in a training ground fight between Keane and himself that provoked Spurs into a genuine sense of a team -- one capable of making a first serious run towards Champions League qualification.

Now under the tough new manager Juande Ramos, Keane's commitment appears to have re-doubled yet again. Recently Massimo Moratti, the president of Internazionale for whom Keane played just nine games -- and scored one goal -- said: "Looking at Keane today, I have to regret he left us so quickly . . . he looks like a perfect player."

Well, maybe not perfect. Not as exquisitely balanced as his team-mate Berbatov, perhaps, but certainly a force of will and ambition, which makes him increasingly a key figure in the team.

The other Keane will no doubt have absorbed all of this as he outlines another vital game-plan. And, perhaps inevitably, smiles that sardonic smile.

- James Lawton

[eirebhoy]

I don't understand people questioning his commitment and work rate when playing for Ireland.

[micls]

I don't understand people questioning his commitment and work rate when playing for Ireland.

I don't question his commitment or work-rate but I do question his efficiency.

For Spurs (from my limited viewing of them) his strength seems to be getting into the right(goalscoring) positions. Then he gets the chances and scores.

However with Ireland he seems to think he needs to go get the ball rather than pick up these positions in the box and ends up in midfield and on the wings at times we need him in the box to score.

I think the captaincy has had an negative influence on this.

[Bondvillain]

I don't understand people questioning his commitment and work rate when playing for Ireland.

No problem with his Irish work rate, just his concentration. I think he has difficulty balancing the yin of Robbie Keane - Ice Cool Hitman with the Yang of Robbie Keane, Captain.

[eirebhoy]

I don't question his commitment or work-rate but I do question his efficiency.

For Spurs (from my limited viewing of them) his strength seems to be getting into the right(goalscoring) positions. Then he gets the chances and scores.

However with Ireland he seems to think he needs to go get the ball rather than pick up these positions in the box and ends up in midfield and on the wings at times we need him in the box to score.

I think the captaincy has had an negative influence on this.
Well any player that constantly ignores managers instructions should be dropped. He could be just doing what the manager wants though. His best form in recent years has been partnering Morrison.

[micls]

Well any player that constantly ignores managers instructions should be dropped. He could be just doing what the manager wants though. .

True but given who that manager was I'm doubting that there were instructions........

[irishfan86]

I think his contrasting form for club and country are a result of a number of factors, but I don't think the captaincy is one of them; after all, he was the leading scorer in this calendar year and captained Spurs for the majority of those games.

His lack of goalscoring comes down to two key genuine factors (not the presence of an armband):
-the absence of a target man to play with (his most recent successes were alongside Berbatov, and before that, Mido).
-the lack of a creative and dominant midfield to get the ball to him. He has to drop deep with Ireland because he never gets the ball.

[tricky_colour]

As a schoolboy Robbie was paid £1 a goal.
If he had stuck to that contract in the Premiership he would now have £100.
Edit 100th goal for Spurs, 100th Premiership was on 26 Dec 2007.

[SkStu]

As a schoolboy Robbie was paid £1 a goal.
If he had stuck to that contract in the Premiership he would now have £100.

ah yeah, but its sterling over there.

Seriously though, congratulations Robbie. Class player. And your missus is a ride.

[drummerboy]

I think Robbie has struggled for Ireland since Niall Quinn retired. He seems to play better with a big man up front with him

[Dave77]

well done robbie! great player for spurs and Ireland

[tricky_colour]

I think Robbie has struggled for Ireland since Niall Quinn retired. He seems to play better with a big man up front with him

Actually his goal ratio for Ireland 78 (32) is 0.410. goals per game where as for
Spurs 181 (76) it is 0.419. . , so....untill this season it was probably a better ratio
for Ireland because he has scored a hatful this (last) year.

We just like to think he plays shyte for us, truth is he plays shyte for Spurs too :D

It's a pretty good ratio all in all.

[Stuttgart88]

The truth is our midfield is so poor Robbie has to try and do the work of 2 men and has to drop deeper than he should. Yes, he missed a few in the last campaign but his general playing form has been good enough.

[eirebhoy]

He's already scored as many premiership goals as last season.

[eirebhoy]

Just out of interest, how is Robbie Keane so famous worldwide? I've talked to people of all nationalities and he's the first name they mention. Maybe it was his excellent world cup but Duff was just as impressive in that and Duff was playing regular champions league football for a few seasons.