Robinson would snub any offer to rejoin O’neill set- up
Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson worked alongside Michael O’neill when Northern Ireland not only qua lifi ed for Euro 2016 but went onto reach the last 16 of the competition.
However, the 42- year-old insist she would reject any offer to rejoin O’neill’s set- up if the latter becomes Scotland’s next manager.
Robinson’s team face Aberdeen tomorrow in their final fixture before next weekend’s Betfred Cup final against Celtic and he claims that his job at Fir Park is too time- consuming to help O’neill on an ad hoc basis – his previous spell with the Irish came when he was the No 2 at Motherwell.
“For me to go with Scotland? Listen, at the minute Michael O’neill is the Northern Ireland manager and I’m the Motherwell manager so that’s all hearsay and ifs and buts,” he said.
“I’m not so sure, though. My focus is totally on Motherwell at this point in time and I’m not sure, as a manager, you could do both roles.
“If you go away and you lose two or three games it would be thrown at you that your focus isn’t at Motherwell so I would say that [ outcome] would be very unlikely.”
Indeed, Robinson would expect to be among the frontrunners to replace O’ Neill –and he didn’ t reject that possibility.
“I probably will be linked with the job ,” he said .“It’ s a big honour for me to even be linked with something like that.
“I’m very patriotic about my country and I’ m very proud of where I come from. I’ ve obviously worked at that level before and it was a massive honour for me to do that.
“That’s all ifs, buts and maybes though. I’m very, very happy as the Motherwell manager and Michael is still the Northern Ireland manager, and I very much hope he remains the Northern Ireland manager, so we’ll worry about that when it happens.”