Town owner and chairman Marcus Evans is reported to have met with manager Roy Keane yesterday to reassure him regarding his position in the wake of this week’s claims of his likely sacking.
Evans’s helicopter was spotted at the Playford Road Training Centre yesterday. This afternoon’s report claims clear-the-air talks with Keane were the reason for his visit.
Speculation regarding Keane’s future had all but disappeared until earlier this week when a national newspaper claimed that Steve Cotterill, who is understood to be close to being named the new manager of Portsmouth, and Tony Mowbray, said to have met with Evans recently, were in the frame to take over at Portman Road.
Back in March, chief executive Simon Clegg dismissed the then-widespread claims that Keane’s sacking was on the cards.
Meanwhile, Keane himself says he has no regrets about his controversial exit from Ireland’s World Cup campaign in Japan and Korea: "Missing out on the 2002 World Cup finals does not lose me any sleep.
"I enjoyed helping Ireland qualify, and the madness of it all is that people still don’t know the full story. There are as usual plenty of second guesses.
"There was a view within the Irish camp that just because we had qualified, we had done enough. But that did not sit with me.
"With a good manager who’s brought a professional attitude and a new stadium about to open, my hope is that Irish football will be now taken seriously. There has been an improvement, but there is a lot more to be done.”