Keane must forever rue the day he walked out on Tottenham

28th July 2008 and Robbie Keane is officially announced as a Liverpool player after agreeing a £20.2 million deal from Tottenham Hotspur. A day the player must forever rue.

Upon Keane’s arrival at Liverpool, Spurs fans were sobering up to the fact they had just lost one of their best players, whilst Liverpool fans were in high spirits as they believed Keane could join Fernando Torres upfront.The Spaniard had just performed to devastating effect in his first season in English football. Daniel Levy was not pleased stating ‘I was incredibly disappointed when I first heard, not only that Liverpool had been working behind the scenes to bring Robbie to Anfield, but that Robbie wanted to go and he submitted a transfer request to this effect. I have made my opinion clear on the nature of this transaction. I don’t regard it as a transfer deal. This is very much an enforced sale’ The Tottenham chairman told the Times back in July 2008.

Yet it turned out to be a good bit of business for Tottenham Hotspur as Keane did not thrive at Liverpool whatsoever. Hours could be spent on the ins and outs of why and how Robbie Keane did not make it at Liverpool. Was he given a long enough time to make an impact? Maybe not, but the fact remains Rafa Benitez made a massive U-turn on his views of Keane within 5 months and promptly sold him back to Tottenham in the January transfer window of 2009 at a cut price of £12 million. Upon the Spurs favorites return, Keane said in a press conference ‘It was a difficult decision to leave Tottenham in the first place and it turned out it was not the right move for me. Some Tottenham fans may feel I let them down but I will give this club my all. We have got to get on and fight our way up the Premier League table.’

Keane has not been able to find his top form since that ill fated move to Anfield, back at White Hart Lane Keane is no longer the top dog anymore. With Harry Redknapp taking charge after the shambles of Juande Ramos,where numerous players were brought in, or brought back it seems, Spurs had new direction and new ideas, to which Keane became a conundrum. With Redknapp a big fan of Crouch and Defoe playing together, Keane was not producing scintillating enough form to split the two favored strikers up. Redknapp had tried fitting Keane into the team, sometimes on the wide right position, to no avail.

Within a year Keane had gradually fallen from homecoming hero to an unfathomable predicament. A player of Keane’s quality cannot sit on the bench at Spurs. Redknapp knew he was a good player, yet preferred the balance of Crouch and Defoe and didn’t know what to do with Keane. His loan move to Celtic was Redknapp’s pill for curing his selection headache. With Eidur Gudjohnson and Roman Pavlyuchenko he knows he has two decent back up options for his first choice strikers, Keane’s pedigree and reputation as a player was too much to be a bench warmer.

One thing for sure is that Keane is having a laugh playing in Scotland. He is by far the best player in the League and hitting some goals for Celtic for 5 months may help him regain his form, fitness and most importantly his confidence, then Redknapp might be willing to try and fit him into the team again. I don’t see it though; I think Keane has played his last game for Spurs.

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