A farewell to Roy Keane

Dave Bowler

11/22/05
 

But once Keane told it like it is about his underachieving colleagues on the famously censored MUTV programme, the writing was on the wall. In the strangely cloistered, ego fuelled places that are Premier League dressing rooms, players are beyond criticism except in the guise of “banter”, the
only person allowed to suggest that they’re other than perfect being the manager, and then not often.

As soon as Keane pointed out that Rio Ferdinand was playing without any interest in the team ever since inking his own $230k a week contact, as soon as he argued that the next crop of Fergie’s Fledglings were pretty much stillborn, he was dead meat. So startled were the poor little dears by a sudden blast of the truth, they couldn’t possibly be expected to be exposed to the raw meat eating Keane ever again, so the time for his departure was due.

Yet in his going, Keane has done one final great service for the club that he has served in supreme style for a dozen years, because in telling the truth, he has done Ferguson’s work for him. Maybe hearing the same old thing from the same red face day after day wears a player down, maybe players stop paying attention.

But a blast from Keane might at least get a few players to really stop and ask themselves if they have been doing enough for the cause. Given that Ferguson played the MUTV interview to the assembled squad prior to the recent Chelsea game, Keane’s blast might just have helped turn United’s season in the right direction,

might have injected the necessary passion and commitment back into a campaign that was increasingly moribund.

They dug deep to beat Chelsea and they did the same to beat Charlton this weekend, surging onwards in proper United style after their lead was pegged back, Rooney and Van
Nistelrooy bringing their genius to bear on the title race once again, though Chelsea still sit in the box seat after overcoming Newcastle at Stamford Bridge.

And Keane? The big question is what’s next for him. Some suggest the role as manager of Ireland is his for the asking, but without managerial experience, and losing himself from the team as a player too, he’d be on a hiding to nothing. And he’s not short of enemies within the Irish FA either.

Playing on at Premiership level is going to be tough for him because after 15 years or more at that exalted level, time is beginning to take a toll on the body. There’s a chance that come January, he might sign a short-term deal with one of those teams with plenty still to do in the second half of the season – Bolton at one end of the table, Albion, Everton or Portsmouth at the other – for that’s the easiest way of making his wages up. Nobody is going to meet his current wages, but if one of those sides can offer a huge bonus for keeping them in the division or, in Bolton’s case, getting into Europe again, that could be the way out.

More likely, having received his United payout until season’s end, Roy will head for what was always reckoned to be the final staging post in his career – Celtic Park. The demands of Scottish football are far less than those in England, giving Keane an opportunity to play another two or three seasons before finally calling it a day, perhaps even getting the chance to follow Gordon Strachan into the managerial hotseat in Glasgow.

With the passing of Keane, a little bit of the sporting and social fabric of the British game enters into history, both in terms of the man and his style of play. Whatever his final destination, he will be missed at Old Trafford and by the Premiership too for he has been one of the biggest figures in the competition’s history, one of the last of the great warhorses who really would try to run through a brick wall for the cause. With Keane, you never know what’s coming next. Just don’t put any money on a move to Sunderland.