Roy Keane, the Sunderland manager, deserted the team, but now wants to come back. But does he have the temperament for the job? No, when one looks at some of his tantrums.
Having just walked out on Sunderland, without even saying goodbye to his players, Roy Keane now declares that he would like to manage again. But who you do wonder will take the risk? When Keane became manager of the North Eastern club, a famous one in dire straits, whom he did take up to the top division, I expressed my doubts about him. This because he as a fine player had always been known as a fearsome competitor, making the utmost demands upon himself and by extension on his team-mates. My fear was that the demands he would make on much lesser players at Sunderland would ultimately have the effect of demoralising them.
Initially, I confess, I seemed to have been proved wrong. Spending heavily but at least, at that period profitably, Keane took Sunderland up; but in more recent times his spending has looked to be out of control, as evidenced by the fact that this season he had been constantly chopping and changing his team which plunged deeper and deeper into trouble. The climax came when they lost ineptly 4-1 at home to a far from brilliant Bolton team, the last and the worst of a string of bad results. That was enough for Keane, who didn’t even talk to his old friend, fellow Irishman and current chairman of the club, Niall Quinn, about his resignation. He simply sent him a message to say that he was off.
Keane is a complex, sometimes a violent, figure. Emanating from an impoverished family in Cork, his father by no means the fiercely achieving figure cut by his son. You wonder to what extent Keane felt as a manager that he was emulating the famous figure at his first English club, Brian Clough. A figure of supreme authority and powerful presence; qualities which were shared by Keane’s subsequent manager, Alex Ferguson, at Manchester United.
Both might be described as authoritarian figures, but neither in their playing days — Clough being a far more accomplished centre forward than Ferguson though his prolific career came to an untimely and cruel end through injury — had the streak of sheer violence which typified Keane.
Hard indeed to forget the horrific vendetta with the Norwegian international midfielder Alf Inge Haaland. It began when Keane was playing for Manchester United away to Leeds United. Attempting to foul Haaland, he succeeded instead, the bitter bit, in seriously injuring himself, but it was on Haaland that he put the blame and on whom he plotted revenge.
This he duly, brutally and even savagely inflicted when Haaland, by then a Manchester City player, was opposing him in the Manchester derby. Keane knocked Haaland down and severely injured him, accompanying his action with a volley of obscene words. We have his own testament to this, published quite shamelessly in his autobiography. Ghosted for him by that maverick ex-Irish international (though not often) and television pundit, Eamon Dunphy. Though it was Eamon, for whose own diverting autobiography ‘Only a Game’ I myself wrote a foreword, who rounded on Keane when he resigned, accusing him bluntly of having lost the plot.
Not easily forgotten, either, was Keane’s tumultuous behaviour on the eve of Ireland’s participation in the 2002 World Cup. In their ineptitude the Irish officials had plonked their squad on a Japanese island where the training facilities were absurdly primitive. Keane had every reason to protest strongly about such a foolish choice; but it wouldn’t end there.
Mick McCarthy, the Ireland manager, chose unwisely to rebuke him in front of his fellow players; a perfect recipe for explosion. And explosion duly came, Keane abusing McCarthy with a torrent of hot and even obscene words, shocking even the other Irish players present. It was clear that a point of no return had been reached and Keane duly left the camp and flew home, thereby depriving his team of their outstanding player. In the circumstances they did extremely well, but they might surely have made still more progress had he only been there.
Arsene Wenger is a deeply different kind of character, but what happened at the Emirates Stadium soon after the Keane’s incident raised questions on his judgment. Unlike Keane, Wenger, born in Alsace, is a balanced, sophisticated and often humorous personality. True there have been times when he, too, has unexpectedly lost his usual calm control. It happened when Arsenal were surprisingly beaten by the then lowly West Ham United at Upton Park. When Hammers scored what proved to be their winning goal, their then manager, Alan Pardrew, went into wild excesses of celebration on the touchline. Incensed, Wenger had to be restrained from an excessive reaction of his own.
Then there was that strange time after an evening game at Highbury at a Press Conference which I attended when Wenger threatened to take action against us journalists, supposedly guilty of putting words into his mouth. What had happened was that he had been crudely and baselessly criticised by Jose Mourinho, Chelsea’s manager, who had called him a voyeur. A crass insult properly criticised by the Press. But what Wenger seemed to be saying was that in his cutting riposte, when no name was mentioned, he hadn’t been referring to Mourinho. Yet who else could it have been?
When Arsenal, the other Saturday, played Wigan at the Emirates, a Wigan team which, less than a month earlier, had crashed there 3-0 to Arsenal’s bright young reserves, Wenger was without his dynamic right winger, Theo Walcott, who’d dislocated a shoulder training with the England team in Berlin. Missing him badly on the right, he deployed there the Brazilian midfielder Denilson, who hadn’t any of the same pace or elusiveness. On the left flank he played the quick little Frenchman, Samir Nasri; but he was fouled badly by Palacios and forced off after 33 minutes.
It seemed a good chance to bring on the precocious 16-year-old, winger Jack Wilshene. Instead, Wenger deployed Eboue, best known as an attacking right back, and only just back from injury and long absence. Eboue failed badly and was spitefully abused by the crowd, and Wenger took him off almost at the end because, he said, Eboue had no confidence and was jeopardising Arsenal’s 1-0 lead. The fans were disgraceful, but was Wenger guiltless?
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