I want to win and I want to do well in Europe next year.”I’ve looked after myself better. It’s only natural as you get older you get a bit of experience. When you’re young you’re a bit na? and think you know everything. You get sidetracked by off-field issues, but I’ve focused on looking after myself.”One former Celtic player who came up against Keane in the Premiership believes that Gordon Strachan can feed off a hungry 34-year-old in the same way that G?rd Houllier enjoyed such a rich seam of triumph when Gary McAllister came to Liverpool at 36.”Roy is leaner now than when I played against him for Middlesbrough a decade ago,” said Derek Whyte, the former Scotland defender “He has his life sorted and you can see how eager he is. Not the result, but it was great that Celtic were even there after beating teams like Liverpool and challenging for a European trophy.”Keane, of course, famously, missed out on Manchester United’s finest hour in 1999, as the European Cup was embraced. “I think it’s important you don’t lose touch with reality because again that has crept into the game a touch. I think fans have lost touch with the players and I think players are guilty of that as well.”Seville was brilliant.

I think I lost two stone that night because of the heat, but I think it was a great occasion. It was not really formed during his childhood in Cork, but during his later years when he came up to Glasgow with some United team-mates, incognito, with his trademark baseball cap, to watch Old Firm games. Witnessing Celtic fans fill Old Trafford in 2001 for Ryan Giggs’ testimonial before Martin O’Neill’s side won 4-3 added a further sheen.”I met a lot of Celtic fans when I was in Seville and I’ve always enjoyed that banter as I did at my previous club,” Keane said. Could a man who makes his displeasure at imperfection known so visibly really have been happy at a place where waving handkerchiefs is considered the right way to signal dissatisfaction?Keane did not phone his old United colleague, David Beckham, to consult him about Madrid. “I probably should’ve made the effort to speak to him over the past few days, but there was so much going on. I spoke to Emilio Butrague?Real’s director of football] the other morning and that was fine.”Keane’s ambition to join Celtic has been a slow-burning one. Now Keane just wants to be there too.
The Manchester United icon eschewed Real Madrid, not to mention Everton and Bolton in the Premiership, to fulfil a dream to join Celtic when he signed on Thursday.

Celtic Park, not the Bernebeu, is the real deal in Keane’s piercing eyes. More than half of the Celtic fans who turned up in Seville did not and instead watched the 3-2 extra-time defeat by Porto in bars and on giant screens in parks. However, their passion to see their team win was undiluted, a trait Keane could empathise with They just wanted to be there. Madrid may have seemed like the perfect curtain call for a performer who has spent the best years of his life at the Theatre of Dreams, yet Roy Keane’s mind was really made up in another part of Spain over two years ago. On a hot suffocating evening in Seville the Irishman discovered he had some soul brothers Around 80,000 of them, in fact. That was the number of Celtic fans who turned up to watch their club’s first European final in three decades. Thanks to his connections, Keane was lucky enough to get a ticket for the 2003 Uefa Cup final.

Hearts had begun to compete with far greater intensity but Mikoliunas took that too far. Six minutes from the end, his rash tackle on Barry Ferguson was punished with a red card.. A nagging doubt must have surfaced with McLeish that his winger’s craft would be undone by the profligacy of others. Indeed, when Hearts replace the toiling Lithuanians, Edgaras Jankauskas and Cesnauskis, and brought on Mikoliunas and Calum Elliot, Rix’s side acquired a threat.When Bednar’s skill set up Rudi Skacel, it required a brave save from Ronald Waterreus at the midfielder’s feet. Ten minutes before the interval, Lovenkrands put Rangers ahead.

Malcolm again delivered another testing free-kick which broke to Lovenkrands and the Dane drilled his shot past Gordon from a tight angle.The bad blood that was coursing between the sides spilled over as they left the pitch at half-time, with Lovenkrands and Andy Webster involved in a row which then became a m?e en route to the tunnel.The second period was characterised by fierce Rangers pressure, with Gordon pawing away a header from Namouchi and then Lovenkrands placing a shot and a header over the bar. Hearts offered a threat on the counterattack and while Roman Bednar squandered his own good work, Deividas Cesnauskis was guilty of sheer greed as he went alone instead of finding Bednar or Paul Hartley. The prospect of Villarreal coming to Ibrox in the Champions’ League in late February will have to keep them warm during the domestic winter.However, Alex McLeish’s side clearly drew inspiration from that prospect as they engaged Hearts in a frenetic first half in a far more tigerish fashion than in recent months. Perhaps it was the desire to atone for a defeat at Tynecastle in September and Hamed Namouchi’s header from Robert Malcolm’s 21st-minute free-kick almost beat Craig Gordon until the Scotland goalkeeper produced a touch-over.Six minutes later, Marvin Andrews ought to have broken the deadlock, but the centre-back produced the miss of the season. A far greater worry for Graham Rix, who has now won only one of five games since taking charge, is that his title contenders are now a shadow of the unit which George Burley left him.They had a chance to open up a 17-point gap over Rangers who, for all their fine play, remain in fourth place. The Edinburgh side’s defeat at Ibrox yesterday could see Celtic open the gap at the top of the Scottish Premier League to six points if they win at Inverness Caledonian Thistle today.
For Hearts, though, the damage was self-inflicted as Saulius Mikoliunas was sent off near the end to earn a second red card against Rangers in nine months. Two minutes later, Watford were wide open as James O’Connor went clear to score his side’s fourth.”When we lose, we lose big,” Adrian Boothroyd, Watford’s manager, said.