Updated 15.00

IRELAND MANAGER MARTIN O’Neill has expressed his delight at Roy Keane’s decision to stay on as his assistant.

The Corkman looked set to take the vacant job at Scottish Premiership champions Celtic last week when it emerged that informal talks had taken place with the club’s majority shareholder Dermot Desmond — but he opted to turn down the offer.

Keane has since been linked with becoming Paul Lambert’s second-in-command at Aston Villa and could possibly hold onto his role with the FAI if he did agree to join the Premier League outfit.

However, Keane, who officially pulled out of ITV’s World Cup pundit team yesterday, will travel to the US with the Ireland squad his week for friendly games against Costa Rica (Friday) and Portugal (10 June) and O’Neill wants to put the speculation to bed for the time being.

“Naturally, I’m very pleased and delighted that he has done so,” O’Neill said today. “Maybe we might just get on with things now. It’s obviously good news for us, for everyone concerned I think. The players in particular are delighted and so are the rest of us.

“As I said to you before, he has enjoyed it here immensely. That obviously plays a part in his thinking.

I’m quite sure there were a number of factors but that was pretty important too. At this minute, he is enjoying it. He has just got started and hopefully that might continue.

“Everything now this minute is on the back burner in terms of all speculation and all that type of stuff. I don’t really want to continue on with this until we come back from the United States.”

Additional reporting from Niall Kelly 

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