O’NEILL SAYS DEAL CLOSE

MARTIN O’NEILL last night finally broke his silence as Republic of Ireland manager after a week of uncertainty over his future. In attempting to take charge of a story that spun out of their control, the FAI and O’Neill stitched together an amateurish 82-second audio in which O’Neill was asked three soft questions. The first was about his new contract, which has not moved on much, if at all, from the verbal agreement of October 5, as O’Neill revealed he had yet to sign it. ‘That’s been resolved. John [Delaney] and I have agreed terms. It’s just a matter of lawyers looking over some details and getting it signed up,’ he said. There was no mention of O’Neill talking to Stoke City about the managerial vacancy. Instead, the two remaining FAI questions focused on the Nations League draw next week and the rest of the football year. ‘The UEFA Nations League draw is an interesting one, it’s coming up very quickly, taking place before the [Euro] draw itself. ‘Not everyone is absolutely au fait with the type of ruling but suffice to say these games are very important,’ said O’Neill. ‘We’ve a couple of friendly games coming up and it might be time to introduce some younger players, certainly for the first game in March,’ he added. O’Neill is due to attend the re-naming of the Aviva Stadium rights today but the FAI insist he won’t be speaking, nor will he say anything for the rest of the week. It’s the second time he has been to Dublin since Friday last and he continues to keep his counsel.