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Keith Andrews refuses to fight fire with fire following Roy Keane’s jibe

Published 10:56 29 Mar 2022 BST

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"It didn’t affect me in the slightest."

Keith Andrews poured cold water on Roy Keane's comments ahead of the Republic of Ireland's friendly against Lithuania at the Aviva Stadium tonight. In a 2020 interview with Barry Egan on The Sunday Independent, Keane called Andrews a bulls**ter when he discussed his role with the Irish national team.

Keith Andrews responds to Roy Keane's comments.

The Ireland assistant manager was adamant that Keane's comments didn't affect him "in the slightest." Andrews went on to say that his conscience is "very clean" when looking at the effort and hard work put into his role with the Boys in Green. “You might have to ask him why? In terms of how it affected me, it didn’t affect me in the slightest. I touched on it, about how passionate I am about this role," Andrews told reporters at the FAI HQ in Abbotstown. "My conscience would be very, very clean in terms of what I put into it because apart from family life it is actually the only thing I care about. In terms of making this team better, in terms of making Irish football better, in terms of giving us a team we are proud to watch."

Andrews on the importance of squad depth.

The 35-times capped midfielder emphasised the importance of building a squad instead of just having a strong starting 11 ahead of tonight's friendly. Stephen Kenny's side play four Nations League matches in June over 11 days. It'll be essential for Ireland to rotate their squad throughout this chaotic run of fixtures. Andrews claimed caps will only be given out on merit, despite playing against Lithuania - who are ranked 134th in the world. However, he is adamant some changes will be made to the lineup. "We are trying to build a squad and we’re conscious of potentially having four games in June, obviously not entirely sure what way that’s going to materialise," said Andrews.

“So Stephen’s always very firm on caps aren’t given out, I very much feel that way as well." "You have to earn them but equally you have to reward players who have been professional around maybe not being selected, not coming into the game, and understand that disappointment. So yeah, there be changes but the team hasn’t been selected yet.”