Arter absence raises questions

THE main job of the man behind the man is to be discrete.

He spends his days wielding influence behind the scenes, never threatening or daring to outshine the front man. The last thing the man behind the man wants to be do is serve as a distraction to the front man, the last thing the man behind the man wants to be is the story.

An assistant manager is a sort of consigliere, a fixer. He’s the guy who makes the trains run on time. He’s the guy who comes up with solutions to problems, not the guy who causes them.

Roy Keane’s star power ensured that he was never going to be a low-key back-room operator, but until this week he’s seemed to rub along nicely with Martin O’Neill. O’Neill seemed more gently amused and slightly bemused by Keane’s profile than threatened by it.

What benefit Keane brought to the set up we’re not quite sure, but that’s sort of the point of an assistant manager. Whatever he was doing met with O’Neill’s satisfaction and that’s really all we need to know... up until the point that Keane started creating problems for his boss.

There’s no other way you can look at the events of this week other than as evidence of Keane causing problems for O’Neill. The Derry man basically admitted that a bust up between Keane and Harry Arter is a factor in the Cardiff City man’s absence from the Republic of Ireland squad.

Ireland – with just eight Premier League players in their squad and just one Premier League midfielder – can ill-afford to start losing players of Arter’s calibre. That it’s a self-inflicted wound and that Keane hasn’t been able to repair his relationship with Arter in the months since their row raises big questions.