Martin O’Neill should dump Roy Keane as soon as possible. This might serve a number of different purposes, which would not in the short term make for an easy life for O’Neill, but at least it might eventually switch the focus back to the welfare and progression of soccer in Ireland. After the furore this week over the latest Keane rants, courtesy of the 43-year-old’s second autobiography, The Second Half, O’Neill, preparing for his team’s Euro qualifying match against Gibraltar tonight, tried to play it causal and non-plussed, but he was fooling no-one. He told RTÉ he was “not necessarily” fed up with answering questions about Keane, and that because Keane is an “iconic” figure, the media circus around him was inevitable.

That, of course, is the very problem. I can’t think of any other country where the assistant manager of its soccer team would be described or regarded as iconic, but there seems to be some sort of mutual dependency at work regarding Keane and Ireland and it is not good for either. I even heard heated discussion during the week about Keane’s terrifying beard – is the beard iconic too? O’Neill has to be the man to break this mutual dependency and return us to sanity.

Of course such a move would be controversial and generate more splenetic debate and there would be much mention of Saipan 2, a new civil war, the second partitioning of Ireland and other such emotiveness, along with the summonsing of RTÉ’s Tommy Gorman from Belfast to plead with O’Neill on behalf of the nation, but when the assistant has become iconic it is time to let him go and be iconic somewhere else.

Given that the description “iconic” also usually implies the character in question symbolises something, what is it that Keane symbolises? Is he the nation writ large? As he writes of himself, “the self-destruct button is definitely there”. Is it the case that his rise to the top of English soccer and his various meltdowns somehow echo the Celtic Tiger and the subsequent crash, while his immaturity, stubbornness and skewed moral compass mirror some of the worst of modern Irish characteristics?

And what of hypocrisy? His insistence that “Stupidity is doing the same things and expecting different results” has been often cited in relation to various Irish failings, but does it not also apply to writing bilious autobiographies?

I doubt Roddy Doyle or Keane ever imagined they would be together touring cricket clubs and institutions bearing the British royal title, but that is what both of them are embracing this month with their book tour; a trip to Lancashire County Cricket club in Manchester and the Royal British Institute of Architects are among the gigs planned. This is a reminder that Keane retains his addiction to maximum exposure at home and abroad to feed his mighty appetite for attention, despite his protestations that he wants a quiet life.

The man who caused a sensation in Saipan in 2002 by lambasting a substandard approach to preparing for the World Cup finals seems quite content to discuss at length his own battle with standards which he has more frequently lost than won on the basis of the new book’s content, replete with petty score settling, head butts, expletives and a very confused sense of what constitutes loyalty and professionalism.

The Saipan episode has already entered the history books, albeit briefly, courtesy of the updated and revised edition in 2011 of the late TW Moody and FX Martin’s The Course of Irish History, first published in 1967. There, we are told in a new chapter entitled “Turning Corners: Ireland 2002-11”, that in Saipan, Keane’s “professionalism was offended”. But what about professionalism and the position he now holds? How professional is it to undermine the soccer team and its manager with his current ego project? Give him the boot Martin.

Inevitably, if O’Neill was to get rid of him there would be yet another autobiography and while predictions will inevitably be made that this will carry the title “Extra Time”, I have an alternative suggestion.

It is quite clear that having availed of the services of a sports writer cum broadcaster and a novelist for the first two volumes, in the form of Eamon Dunphy and Roddy Dolye, Keane now requires the services of a professional historian, if only so justice can be done and sufficient context provided for his life and times.

The resultant book could be called Judging Roy: Portrait of an Icon and published by the Royal Irish Academy or some other august institution. Study of Keane could then be built into a broader academic programme with university PhD programmes in Keane studies and seminars that seek to tease out the implications of the national stupidity of doing the same things and expecting different results. Martin, do what you must do, and then Roy, give me a call.