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Offline ckhan

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Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« on: February 21, 2009, 11:19:12 AM »
http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_4954544,00.html

Keane explains Black Cats exit
Ex-boss blames American investor for change of dynamics
Last updated: 21st February 2009

Keane: Speaks out

Players had been taking the piss out of the club for years. If they wanted them smiling all the time they should have employed Roy Chubby Brown.
Keane on Quinn
Quotes of the week

Former Sunderland boss Roy Keane has blamed American investor Ellis Short and a change of attitude from chairman Niall Quinn for his decision to quit the club.

Keane performed miracles at The Stadium of Light after winning promotion to the Premier League at the first attempt before going on to retain their top-flight status in the 2007/08 season with a fine 15th-placed finish.

However, Keane dramatically resigned from his Black Cats post in December after 28 months in charge and the Manchester United legend has now spoken for the first time about the reasons behind his departure.

The former Republic of Ireland international believes the arrival of Short left him questioning his future due to his unusual requests.

Changing dynamics
"We had sat down with him a couple of times, Niall and I," Keane told the Irish Times. "I went down to London to meet him twice. I thought, hmm, the dynamics are changing here.

"He said he had read my book. I felt he was thinking from the start that I wasn't for him. He sort of knew this wasn't going to be a long-term relationship.

"It started with a demand to know where I had been the previous day, that he wanted me available at all times. It was a disappointment. Then there were accusations about how often I came in, about moving my family up. And it was the tone."

Keane also revealed a change in attitude from Quinn concerned him deeply after the club's supremo revealed his desire for the manager to put a smile back on the players' faces.


Major concern
"He was talking to me about the players needing to come into work with a smile on their face. That really concerned me," he continued.

"The day I walked into Sunderland, putting a smile on the faces of well-paid players was the last thing anybody wanted me to do.

"Players had been taking the piss out of the club for years. If they wanted them smiling all the time they should have employed Roy Chubby Brown.

"My question to Niall was, who are you listening to here? It wasn't Niall. It was the undercurrent. Where it was coming from. Smiles on players' faces? It's my job to get them training well.

"There was good spirit. That's what had kept us in the Premiership last year. Our spirit. That got the alarm bells ringing.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor it cannot save the few who are rich.

- John F. Kennedy

Offline Quags

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2009, 11:57:18 AM »
Oh hor ,so he had get the hint eh lol .

Offline Tenorsaw

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2009, 01:15:43 PM »
While the investor can express interest in the running of the club, he cyar act as if Roy was on a 9-5 job.  Sounds a bit like a new man coming into the Prem, and not fully understanding how clubs operate, in terms of coaching structure.  Even if Keene were not present things would run.  There is a first team coach, a physio staff, assistant coaches, etc.  I don't think Keene would have been an absentee coach; it doesn't seem like him, personality wise.  There are two sides to a story though, and I await the response.

Offline kev

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2009, 04:33:19 PM »
The full piece is here

Highlighted the bit about Yorke for you

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2009/0221/1224241589471.html

The box office awaits the return of a matinee idol


ROY KEANE INTERVIEW: He’ll be back. Football is in his blood. TOM HUMPHRIES hears the true story of what was going on behind the scenes on Wearside and what the future may hold.

SMELL OF SUCCESS: A beard, for God’s sake, does he think he is Jesus?

HE FLICKED the button on the car phone speaker and killed the call. When the road offered him a decent chance to do so he spun the car around and pointed it the other way. He made another call and kept on driving. Home was empty when he got there. No Theresa. No kids. He had a cup of tea and waited. He doesn’t remember how long it took, but he remembers looking out the window and seeing the journalists gathering at the gate.

It had been done.

He learned three days later that he could have had them moved on. They stood on the neighbours’ walls and blocked the road. They wanted one thing. They wanted a few quotes, certainly, but mainly they wanted a picture of Roy Keane walking the dog.

He looked out the front door one day and the flashbulbs popped. Makes you look like a criminal looking out your own front door.

Meanwhile, everybody he had ever met and plenty he hadn’t were weighing in with their opinions. He lists some of the names and some of the opinions, shaking his head in sadness. Some of the sadness punctuated with laughter. “Tony Cascarino says he will never work in management again! He never signed his new contract! He’s grown a beard! He was remote. He was isolated. He had lost the plot. A beard, for God’s sake! Does he think he is Jesus?”

He gets to Alex Ferguson’s name on the roll call of expert contributors. Well . . .

“Alex Ferguson. My old manager comes out and says, ‘You never know what he is going to do next’. What did he think I was going to do? Go backpacking around Mexico? I have five kids. Football is in my blood! I’d just had enough at Sunderland. Things had changed. End of bloody story.”

Funny thing is, he says, there was no crisis in the Keane household, apart from the intruders at the gate. No sobbing. No wailing. They sat tight. He had never done cool, clean exits. This was part of a series. They’d ride it out.

On Saturday afternoon he got a text from Sunderland’s owner, Ellis Short, apologising for a piece which had been written by an assistant of his in the Guardian.

He stared at the phone for a minute. There had been no text from Short saying goodbye or thank you or can we talk about this. Now Short was saying sorry about a piece in the Guardian. Must be bad. “They made out afterwards that the guy who did the talking was some kind of minion, but this was the same man who came and interviewed me a few months earlier about my plans for the club. They knew what they were doing. If the number two is doing a piece calling me a maverick and saying I couldn’t be trusted, I’m unstable, etc, you know things haven’t been right.”

Yes, things had changed at Sunderland. Richard Bevan of the League Managers Association (LMA) came and told Keane he was sitting still in a tornado of negative spin. The LMA took the Guardian to law and an apology and €11,323 was quick to materialise. Keane gave the money away. Couldn’t touch it.

The folk at the gate drained away like snow into slush into water. They missed the best photo opportunity at the end of the day. When the dust had settled, he went back to his apartment up in Durham. His old friend and assistant, Tony Loughlin, had lived just down the street during their time together at Sunderland.

Now it was time to clear Roy’s apartment. So they hired a van and did it themselves. Early one morning. The settee, the television, the armchairs, the works. Two removal men straining muscles they never knew they had and laughing to each other as they waited for a geezer with a camera to pop out from behind a hedge to snap the dynamic duo doing the heavy lifting. Reminded him of his days working for Cork Timber years ago.

All things pass.

THE MATRIX: “He’s on €30,000 or €40,000 a week, and he is upset about the appearance cheque.”

WHEN YOU try to sign a player now, the agent won’t let him come near you until the deal is done. Everything is agreed. Every “i” is dotted, every “t” crossed. Then you get to meet your blushing, pimply bride.

Scene: Roy Keane is sitting in his office at Sunderland. Across the table a young fella is slumped, gum in his mouth, ripped jeans, and he comes from what Keane describes decisively as a “crap club”. He mutters something to Keane.

“Sorry?”

“Who else ya buying?”

Recalling the morning and the meeting and the player now, he gives a quick flourish of teeth and rolls his eyes.

“I should have told him there and then to get out of my office. But I signed him. We needed bodies at the time. He got a contract for too much. You learn. I learned. If the word about a player is that he is bad news, well, then he will be bad news.

“But when we came up we had 13 or 14 players starting into the Premiership. You’ll sign anybody who will play. I would be giving contracts to players I didn’t rate that highly. I needed the bodies! You learn. Every manager does. There’s an image of me as being intolerant of anything different to what I would have done late in my career, but I rolled with things.

“I gave the benefit to lots of players. I had the police come to the training pitch and had to go off with them for one of the players one day. Christmas dos, parties, etc. Things got out of hand and I sorted it. Three players were caught on video one night with a girl. I had to go and sort it out. I wanted one to play the next game. We actually needed him. Niall and the board overruled me. I took their opinion on board.”

There’s an artificial intelligence that rules the football world. Players are subject to it above all else. Money. The Matrix. They don’t teach you much about its corrosive influences down at Lilleshall on the FA coaching courses, but it drives young men crazy.

He recalls another player at Sunderland being left out of a League Cup game one night and letting it be known around the precinct that he was royally pissed off. Not because he was missing a game, but because he was obsessed with his appearance money. No game, no little cheque.

“He’s on €30,000 or €40,000 a week, and he is upset, not about missing out, but about the appearance cheque. Jesus.”

Once upon a time, when Roy Keane was a young blade at Manchester United, he drove a red Mercedes which carried the registration “Roy J16”.

“That’s not the proudest moment of my life,” he says when you remind him. “I was stupid, but at least I had done a few things in football.”

At Sunderland he would look at the players shuffling out to the training ground in the mornings and half of them moved with the enthusiasm of men arriving at 5.30am at the pithead. “Nothing but a 12-hour shift down the mine ahead of them.”

Players. Players. Players. He had too many of them. He knows that. When Sunderland were surfacing from the depths, they had too few players and his reaction was to overcompensate. Too many players means you are over the recommended limit of grumpy players.

And then he brought in Antonio Gomez from Liverpool to work on the physical side, and suddenly they had fewer injuries too. Kenwyne Jones got injured playing a friendly for Trinidad and Tobago against England, but everyone else seemed to become indestructible.

“If you are left out of the team, you will be grumpy. I certainly was. If you have two or three pissed off, you have a chance. If you have seven, eight or nine of them pissed off? Well, the atmosphere changes. I knew that was an issue. I knew come January a few of them would move on though.”

Some old timers attempted to take advantage of familiarity. He had to pull Kenny Cunningham up on his habit of calling him Roy all the time when the rest of the panel called him Gaffer. A venial sin.

Dwight Yorke’s sin was of the mortal variety. “One day I get Yorkie texting me from an international game asking can he miss a league match the following week because he has business to take care of. No!”

And some of them, he isn’t sure yet how to categorise them. He remembers bringing Clive Clarke, on one of his rare Sunderland appearances, to play at Stoke, where he had been a player.

“He had been there. I swear he actually thought he was Stanley Matthews coming back to them . . . Kissing everybody.

“He got back on the bus with presents for his baby, delighted with himself.

“He went on loan to Coventry, and on a night we got beaten in the cup to Luton the staff came in and said ‘Clive Clarke has had a heart attack at Leicester’. I said, ‘Is he okay? I’m shocked they found one, you could never tell by the way he plays’. But Clive Clarke goes and does a piece in some newspaper telling the world that I have lost the dressingroom. He wasn’t there! How does he know? Clown!”

The club’s station in life changed. So did the players. And the ethos. He read a quote a few weeks ago from George Graham which reminded him of meeting the Tottenham lads he signed last summer.

“George said, if you are buying a player he has to see it as a step up. I thought that was spot on. You don’t want to be signing players who make out they are doing you a favour coming to your club.”

So he ended up, inadvertently, with too many players and a quiet staff.

Any bollockings were always issued from Keane’s tongue. It was boom, boom, boom when he hit the training pitch. Incoming! Incoming!

“On the days when I was there I would step in and pep things up, but sometimes afterwards I would think to myself that the staff should really be catching this. It was a little worry.

“In an ideal world, if a player comes to complain to a staff member – and they do, because footballers can be moody bastards and I was one of the worst – you want the staff member saying, ‘Look, keep your head down, shut up and get on with it in training’. You can’t be saying, ‘I’d have you in my team. He’s not been in for two days, so how does he know how good you were today?’

“You can’t have your staff man wanting to be mates. I think in retrospect there was a bit of that.”

When Keane left, his successor gave back the fines – Sunderland say 50 per cent of each fine was returned – which he had imposed for disciplinary issues during the year. He shakes his head. Hmm.

DAYS OF HEAVEN: It was just two years since they met in secret in the Irish countryside.

A FEW weeks in death’s waiting room. At the end of last October, Sunderland beat Newcastle United 2-1. When Keane arrived at Sunderland they were second from bottom in the Championship mire and charitable commentators included the word “Sunderland” in any sentence which also included the words “sleeping” and “giant”.

Now, in their second year of Premiership football, they had beaten Newcastle United. Damned Mags. That’s Freedom of the City stuff.

It was just over two years since they had met in secret at a house in the Irish countryside. Keane and Niall Quinn and the nascent Drumaville consortium. Whoa. Salman Rushdie, the Ayatollah and who?

They’d met, had shaken hands and worked out what sort of football club they wanted to build. One with values and foundations.

And they were doing it. For two-and-a-bit years. Keane’s mantra to Quinn and to Drumaville was that he would do the football his way. Always they nodded happy assent. He’d called Tony Loughlin, one of his oldest friends in football, and they headed for the northeast, partners in crime.

Drumaville wanted ambition and drive and value. Those qualities blew into the windswept Charlie Hurley Training Ground on Day One. His players got the best of everything. His staff looked and sounded smart and savvy. Sunderland did things with a bit of class. Values.

“I’ve always been 100 per cent behind the values at Sunderland. We tried to change the whole mindset – the training ground, the atmosphere, the way we approached matches, the way we dressed, hotels. That doesn’t win the games for you, but I wanted us to be seen – and so did Niall – as a proper, well-run club.

“I would go to other clubs and come back to Sunderland and wonder how people coming in to play us would see our club. I think we had a bit of class. It is a fantastic football club. I have no bitterness towards the club.”

And they found traction quickly, taking the elevator from the basement to the top of the Championship table.

He’d taken the job at Sunderland and now he was the front for everything. Programmes, season tickets, media, etc. “Box Office” was the buzz phrase. He was box office. Being that way is part of his DNA, but . . .

“At the same time, I’m 35 and learning the trade. Sunderland offered me the job and it was a punt for them. And Sunderland was a punt for me. We knew there’d be mistakes, but everything in football gets so much spin that there’s no breathing room.”

They beat Newcastle and then they lost three on the spin after that. Stoke. Bad. Chelsea. Understandable. Portsmouth. Hmm.

By the time they were to play Blackburn on November 15th, the story had gone mad. He got a call on Thursday from Louise, the public relations woman at Sunderland. It can’t have been an easy call to make.

“Roy, they say you are resigning?”

How do you respond when your employers are asking you if you have left the building?

“Really?” he said looking at the phone and narrowing his eyes, sniffing the air and seeing if he smelled any rats. “Well, I’ll see you in work tomorrow.”

As it turned out, he had to attend a meeting the next morning and he didn’t get to training. By the time he met the team that night the story was almost being run as verifiable fact across the media universe. Sunderland beat Blackburn on Saturday afternoon.

He chuckled to himself and moved on. Maybe he shouldn’t be coming in at all. They beat Blackburn, but failed to turn a corner. West Ham did them next time out. Then Bolton came to the Stadium of Light and scored four.

Niall Quinn rang him on the Monday. They were talking football, which was unusual. In fact, it was, Keane concedes, the first time in two-and-a-half years Quinn had mentioned team matters to him.

“And Niall would say, he was chairman, we had lost 4-1, he had to make the call. Fair enough, but he was talking to me about the players needing to come into work with a smile on their face. That really concerned me. The day I walked into Sunderland, putting a smile on the faces of well-paid players was the last thing anybody wanted me to do. Players had been taking the piss out of the club for years. If they wanted them smiling all the time they should have employed Roy Chubby Brown.”

Not Roy Keane.

“My question to Niall was, who are you listening to here?”

Alarm bells went off and red flags went up. Quinn keeps his ear to the ground. People speak to him and he interprets the winds. Keane wondered what was beneath these words.

“It wasn’t Niall. It was the undercurrent. Where it was coming from. Smiles on players’ faces? It’s my job to get them training well. There was good spirit. That’s what had kept us in the Premiership last year. Our spirit. That got the alarm bells ringing. Without a shadow of a doubt. The American fella would have been on Niall’s case.”

HEIMAT: “That’s why I loved it there. That’s why football is in the blood.”

THEY LOST once at Everton, 7-1, in their first season in the Premiership. The worst ever, but David Moyes was a gentleman afterwards. He got it just right. Not over the top, not patronising, not insincere. Keane liked that. There’s a common feeling with a lot of the managers, a loose sense of professional brotherhood.

He enjoyed Martin O’Neill’s company greatly. Many more.

“Rafa was good. Sam Allardyce was very good. Gave me good advice. I hope I’m not being rude about anyone else, but they showed time and effort and bit of class. Brucey of course. Incey. Roy Hodgson. At heart they are romantics. Almost every club is one step forward and two steps backward, but you ride on, always having to believe you are the one who can sort the club out.

“A year before I got them I could never have talked to the Malbranques or Cisses. You build bit by bit. Hang in there until you have your nucleus of seven or eight on long-term contracts, and they will be the lads you will depend on and who will make your team and your club. We were getting there with Sunderland.”

He likes that, the shifting sands, the business of trying to chart a course for a club. Other managers are rivals, but basically they are all figuring out the same thing. How to lift the deadweight of a club from A to B, lift it across this mire of low values and puny fellow travellers.

When the Sunderland job came up, he fully intended to move there. He and Theresa did the rounds of the estate agents and schools. For one reason or another nothing ticked all the boxes. Commuting didn’t tick the boxes either, but taking over a club at the bottom of the Championship table as a new, young manager is a high-risk business. They decided to play safe and put the family first. He drove to work, took a flat in Durham and stayed there when he was working. He drove home when he wasn’t.

He was never going to be a five-day-a-week training ground animal. He radiates too much edginess for that. The treadmill would make him stale and make those around him stale. The job was 24 hours a day nonetheless, building a scouting network, changing the outlook, hunting players, watching matches. They all rolled the sleeves up, and it worked.

As it worked, he was never moved by the results. Not even on the best days. When they got promoted, a great moment for the staff and the players for whom he still today can’t give enough praise, he slipped away for a cup of tea amidst the jubilation. And what moved him when the end came was getting the calls and text messages from people who worked at the club.

“The tea lady at the stadium, Audrey. Brilliant. That’s why it was worth it. A few other messages I got, a few of the senior players too, but three or four younger ones really moved me. Bill the masseur, he is Sunderland through and through. The messages were class, the effort, the thought, the words. Just class. I thought, that’s why I loved it there. That’s why football is in the blood.”

Since he left he has always made sure to be doing something on the day of a game. He doesn’t want to be sitting at home checking, checking, checking on the teletext.

“Will I always be interested in their results? Of course I will. Sunderland is a brilliant football club. Brilliant. It was the best decision I ever made going there. And it was the best decision to leave. In between, I loved my time there.

“You think of all the spin, all the hype, and you think, why do I want to go back into that? But it’s those things, a text from a tea lady or a young player. It makes it worthwhile.”

So he waits for another club to enter his bloodstream and demand his energy.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI: Ellis Short is of Irish descent, but not Irish temperament.

THE OWNERSHIP at Sunderland changed last September when American businessman Ellis Short took a 30 per cent interest. Things changed within the Stadium of Light.

“When I became a manager, Niall became a chairman. I always believed we were working together, not one working for the other. It worked well. I couldn’t have faked that if I didn’t feel it working. Drumaville, they were spot on and it worked.

“I was more comfortable with Drumaville. I never saw them after matches, I think, but they stuck to what agreement we had. They’d come in, watch the games, and get a flight back home to Ireland.”

Short arrived from a different background. He is from Missouri. He runs Lone Star Funds from, as you might have guessed, Texas. Dallas, Texas. He is of Irish descent, but not very much of Irish temperament.

“We had sat down with him a couple of times, Niall and I. I went down to London to meet him twice. I thought, hmm, the dynamics are changing here. He said he had read my book. I felt he was thinking from the start that I wasn’t for him. He sort of knew this wasn’t going to be a long-term relationship.”

From early on there was pressure to change the working arrangements. Short wanted Keane at Sunderland day in and day out. But as long as Sunderland were winning matches the case for relocation was weak.

“To be fair to Niall, I think he would have been under similar pressure. And maybe this is an understatement (laughs), but Niall would be more diplomatic than me. He can roll with things.”

Defeat sucks the air out of a club though. That time when Sunderland lost to Everton by seven goals to one, Keane ignored his phone for a day or two and sat nursing his thoughts.

The setback to Bolton wasn’t like that at first. On Monday he met Mick Brown and the scouting staff and did other bits and pieces. He took that call from Quinn, though, and it played on his mind.

The next day, Tuesday, he noticed Short’s name coming up on his phone a few times. He decided to ignore it. Not today. Not today.

On Wednesday he was heading back to Sunderland anyway. There was a reserve game down for that night and he had work to do. He packed the car up and hit the road. He had calls to catch up on. Ellis Short. He didn’t punch in the numbers thinking that he was going to sort this American out for once and for all, but within 30 seconds things had gone bad.

“It started with a demand to know where I had been the previous day, that he wanted me available at all times. It was the second day in my career as a manager that I had ignored calls. It was disappointment. Same as after the Everton game.

“Then there were accusations about how often I came in, about moving my family up. And it was the tone.”

He’s not saying it was ideal, the two-hour drive to Sunderland. It caught up with him in the end without a shadow of a doubt. He could see that. But this was a matter of tone, a change of conditions.

“At United, I finished and I knew I was just an employee to them. At Sunderland it was the same. I left and people came out saying ‘he’s gone and we’re all more relaxed’. It was them and me. I think the United experience helped me. It didn’t upset me, what happened at Sunderland. It was a business decision. Even for me I suppose it was a business decision. I couldn’t give my heart and soul with this fella on my shoulder. That, I’m sure, is how he works.”

So he put the phone down and when he had turned the car he rang Michael Kennedy, his friend, his lawyer and his representative, and said, “Michael, speak with whoever you have to speak to. I’m done with Sunderland.”

Quinn came on later and said he hadn’t known the conversation had gone the way it had. Keane said there was no way he could work for this guy. That was it.

IDEA FOR A SITCOM: “We’ll all move in together sure and see how that goes!”

HE THINKS of the call. The mood he was in. The end of the affair.

It was a good time. Better than any of the spin merchants outside gave it credit for being. He says, again, if he wasn’t loving it, he couldn’t have faked it.

“There was great enthusiasm there. It was a brilliant time.”

He knows now that with his next job he will more than likely be moving house. The driving and the nights away from home wore him down. He enjoys the small things, like checking on the kids at night.

“I’m happy to move house. Theresa is happy to move. I’m not tied to Manchester. I’m from Cork. I’d be happy to go anywhere. I would be happy to manage a Championship club.

“If we had found something right for us, we would have moved to Sunderland or nearby. I felt I was able to travel, though, because I’m not a player anymore, physically I am not on the pitch every day. I was never going to be on the training ground every day. That would have been bad for me and the players. And while it worked, it worked.”

Suddenly, though, down the phone was a voice demanding to know why he wasn’t in Sunderland. “How come you aren’t there? Why are you not living there?”

He wishes he had handled it differently. Not a different outcome. Just wishes he had asked Short why he didn’t live in Sunderland himself. With Niall as well. “Niall doesn’t live there, the new owner doesn’t live there. I wish I’d said, ‘you move up and I’ll move up. And Niall too. We’ll all move in together sure and see how that goes!’ You always think of these things when it is too late.”

THE SIMPSONS – THE MOVIE: Now Church Street is quieter and calmer and so is he.

IN THE last few weeks at Sunderland he reckons he lost patience with himself more than anything else. He came to realise that, in a management gig, whatever moans he had just came back to himself. After a lifetime of being a player and passing all moans upwards, it was a revelation.

“I am comfortable with that. I’m learning. Staff. Players. Everyone. They come to me. I like the buck stopping here.”

The fog lifted after a few weeks and he has enjoyed the weeks of calm. He went skiing in France with the family, a first-time experience for him. Nursery slopes for the warrior.

At the end of January he ticked another item off that long list of things a person vows to do before they kick the bucket. Football has always owned his Januarys, but with free time like putty in his hands he took off with Tony for the Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida. The Steelers. The Cardinals. The Big Show.

Along the way the two friends took in Orlando. Keane brought Locky down to Church Street, the gaudy, central strip of Orlando’s town centre. Where does time flee to? The last time he had been beneath these lights was 15 years ago in another life, another story. The World Cup. Drinking with Irish fans three or four nights before World Cup games. The place teemed with life back then and beery, innocent Irish hope.

He was torn between youth and cold professionalism. He did some of the beery stuff. More than enough of it. But he had his first run-in, too, with an Irish management and the way it did things. Himself and Maurice Setters disagreed sharply about the benefits of a gruelling training session in the merciless sun and soupy humidity. There was a hammy attempt by Jack Charlton to paper over the whole business in the press tent the next day, but Keane’s body language articulated all that needed to be known.

This time Church Street is quieter and calmer and so is he. The boys hit Universal Studios in the morning. Keane had been there last year with Theresa and the kids. He had sat outside in the sunshine with the youngest on his knee while the others queued for The Simpsons ride.

When the family had come out and pronounced the experience to be the best thing ever, he had chuckled and presumed they were teasing him. He’d missed it! They hadn’t! Now he and Locky grinned as they lowered the safety bars and the car climbed towards the perfect blue skies, winching itself up and up to the top point of the rollercoaster’s immense arc, to the frozen instant where the thrills start, that pregnant moment from which they would take their precipitous, swooshing dive toward Mother Earth and then climb back up again. Aaaaaaaaagh! White knuckles! SweetMotherofSuffer- ingGForceJesus! Sideshow Bob and a platoon of bungling incompetents are threatening to derail the whole shuddering handcart. Roy and Locky get flung this way and they get flung that way. They get swallowed by a giant baby and spat out again, they slide backwards into the inferno of hell and are pulled free at the last second, they crash, they hurt, they burn, they shudder.

And then the lights go on. Locky and Keane are in the same small room they entered just a little while ago.

They are told to exit to the right and to have a nice day. Keane feels that his breakfast wants to see fresh air again. He feels his treacherous knees weak and shaky beneath him.

His brain is making corrections, though, the whole experience, it has been a simulation, a triumph of spin and imagery and expectation over reality.

He stepped off the ride and out of the room, leaving the cartoon world behind. Real life was still outside and elsewhere. In the back of his head he knew that all along.

They grinned to each other, Roy and Locky.

Right boy, what’s next?

Owners, managers and players

““I went down to London to meet him twice. I thought, hmm, the dynamics are changing here. He
said he had read my book. I felt he was thinking from the start that I wasn’t for him.
– on Ellis Short

'Maybe this is an understatement, but Niall would be more diplomatic than me. He can roll with
things.'
– on Niall Quinn

'The staff came in and said Clive Clarke has had a heart attack. I said, ‘Is he okay? I’m shocked they found one, you could never tell by the way he plays’.
– on Clive Clarke

“Rafa was good.Sam Allardyce was very good. Gave me good advice. Brucey of course. Incey. Roy
Hodgson. At heart they are romantics.'
– on other managers

Offline PantherX

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2009, 06:14:43 PM »
Kev there no way I'm reading all of that but thanks anyway :)

Offline WestCoast

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2009, 06:42:46 PM »
Kev there no way I'm reading all of that but thanks anyway :)
:rotfl:
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
Lord Chesterfield
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Offline kounty

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2009, 06:50:30 PM »
panther...really good read dread!!!
is like a free book.   I doh even dig novels like that but I would buy this book.
Quote
THEY LOST once at Everton, 7-1, in their first season in the Premiership. The worst ever, but David Moyes was a gentleman afterwards. He got it just right. Not over the top, not patronising, not insincere. Keane liked that. There’s a common feeling with a lot of the managers, a loose sense of professional brotherhood.
that was really good imagery and a sense of the real truth behind the appearances...remind me of a cold war spy novel  :D

Offline davidephraim

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2009, 07:58:34 PM »
Roy keane is ah asshole who learned de hard way that yuh cant sacrifice happiness. it's not the army roy.
Warren N. Boucaud

Offline Bakes

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2009, 08:26:03 PM »
There's no way I'm reading any of that.  No offense to Kev, appreciate the post... but I simply have no interest whatsoever in anything Roy Keane has to say at this point.

Offline dwolfman

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2009, 11:29:18 PM »
I enjoyed the article. It is not often that I read such long articles on people. I'm not a fan of Keane, but I respect the man... more so after reading this article.

Offline Quags

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #10 on: February 22, 2009, 12:32:12 AM »
Quote
Dwight Yorke’s sin was of the mortal variety. “One day I get Yorkie texting me from an international game asking can he miss a league match the following week because he has business to take care of. No!”
So it the text must be go something like .Hello Roy ,can you do me a big favor ,since am down here ,and am not playing ,can I stay an extra week and take care of some family business .
Reply Nooo!!! get back up here ,we have a spot on the bench warming for you ,were paying your wages.

What an Arse hole Roy Keane is ,Quinn try to hint to the man ,hey put a smile bck on the players .And it went totally over his head !!! Nobody "s happy ,and enjoying coming to work . ::) Please relax.

Offline kev

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #11 on: February 22, 2009, 04:54:34 AM »
There's no way I'm reading any of that.  No offense to Kev, appreciate the post... but I simply have no interest whatsoever in anything Roy Keane has to say at this point.


BNS

Didn't think many would on here tbh which is why I didn't bother starting a thread on it, but I thought I would put up the full interview rather than skys shortened version as balance, just highlighted the Yorke bit as the only interest for those on here and got the bite I expected. ;)

Offline boss

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #12 on: February 22, 2009, 06:42:50 AM »
Fact: Sunderland have doubled their points total since Keane left.

I think he comes across as a really good player who can't handle the fact that he didn't do well in his first try as a manager. A classier person would have kept this all under wraps instead of running to a newspaper for a "tell-all."  :beermug:

Offline dcs

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #13 on: February 22, 2009, 08:15:46 AM »
Fact: Sunderland have doubled their points total since Keane left.

I think he comes across as a really good player who can't handle the fact that he didn't do well in his first try as a manager. A classier person would have kept this all under wraps instead of running to a newspaper for a "tell-all."  :beermug:


I wouldn't say he didn't do well.  He took them from bottom of the championship and kept them up in the EPL their first season.  What was more difficult was throwing off that underachiever yoke they had for years by making big changes to their philosophy. Brought in their best player and a current player-coach.
Like he said...it ran its course and it was always expected to be messy but all they set out for was overall success and they achieved that but it look like it was time to pass the baton.  I think he learned a lot and will be a better manager for it.

And due to the nature of the job I think a lot of good managers will probably be classified as a$$hole$.

Offline Quags

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #14 on: February 22, 2009, 08:31:16 AM »
Yeah but you cant be a arsehole and a dick at the same time ,cause you will only end up screwing your self right .
« Last Edit: February 22, 2009, 08:36:03 AM by Quagmire »

Offline Bakes

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #15 on: February 22, 2009, 09:14:04 AM »
There's no way I'm reading any of that.  No offense to Kev, appreciate the post... but I simply have no interest whatsoever in anything Roy Keane has to say at this point.


BNS

Didn't think many would on here tbh which is why I didn't bother starting a thread on it, but I thought I would put up the full interview rather than skys shortened version as balance, just highlighted the Yorke bit as the only interest for those on here and got the bite I expected. ;)

I agree with posting the full article... obviously some enjoyed it.  Keane still has his supporters on here believe it or not, lol

Offline acb

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #16 on: February 22, 2009, 09:44:16 AM »
Quote
“He went on loan to Coventry, and on a night we got beaten in the cup to Luton the staff came in and said ‘Clive Clarke has had a heart attack at Leicester’. I said, ‘Is he okay? I’m shocked they found one, you could never tell by the way he plays’. But Clive Clarke goes and does a piece in some newspaper telling the world that I have lost the dressingroom. He wasn’t there! How does he know? Clown!”

 :rotfl:
throw parties, not grenades.

Offline kev

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #17 on: February 22, 2009, 11:42:28 AM »
Fact: Sunderland have doubled their points total since Keane left.

I think he comes across as a really good player who can't handle the fact that he didn't do well in his first try as a manager. A classier person would have kept this all under wraps instead of running to a newspaper for a "tell-all."  :beermug:


TBF he being who he is was always going to do an interview at some point and there has been a decent amount of time gone by.  If he had of wanted a slagging match then he could of started it long ago when the new shareholder got his lacky to say he was unstable rouge etc the day after he resigned and quickly apologised for it.  It is obvious that is what he wanted out and the apology was meaningless.  I don't think it is also a coincidence that Quinn came out this week and said Short was to thank for the summer signings given the well publicised interview was due out.  I am not defending Keane just pointing out the fact this is retiallation rather than him starting it. 

I think people forget he was still very much learning his trade and where the club was before he came.  He is without doubt a bit of a losse canon but overall you would have to say given where the club was when he came its squad etc and where it was when he left he is probably ahead, which is not that bad at his first job.

Offline ckhan

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #18 on: February 22, 2009, 03:58:50 PM »
Normally, no man makes a decision without a reason behind it.  I thought that the article on skysports was interesting and decided to post it since RK gathered so much interest on this board for a certain period.  Thanks to Kev for posting the full article to give it a "balance" if you will.  No scene bro, knowledge is power.

   
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Offline Cocorite

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #19 on: February 22, 2009, 04:21:40 PM »
I think Keane is a very good Manager--loads of talent, with an eye for being the BEST. But he will have to grow into a less intense style although the excellence mus'nt be compromised. A difficult balancing act especially when you're in Roy Keane's skin.
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Offline TriniItalian

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #20 on: February 23, 2009, 07:14:12 PM »
Quote
Dwight Yorke’s sin was of the mortal variety. “One day I get Yorkie texting me from an international game asking can he miss a league match the following week because he has business to take care of. No!”
So it the text must be go something like .Hello Roy ,can you do me a big favor ,since am down here ,and am not playing ,can I stay an extra week and take care of some family business .
Reply Nooo!!! get back up here ,we have a spot on the bench warming for you ,were paying your wages.

What an Arse hole Roy Keane is ,Quinn try to hint to the man ,hey put a smile bck on the players .And it went totally over his head !!! Nobody "s happy ,and enjoying coming to work . ::) Please relax.
It might have been true that Yorke woulda go back to warm bench but think of it like going to lunch in work with two workmate allyuh went shopping but u ent eat so yuh feeling hungry so yuh call in to say yuh want an extra hour HELL NO come back to work and drop down! it's not that the manager doh really care but yuh can't afford for players to think the manager and you bulling so u getting everything you want
A.W.A.T.T. INFORMANT

Offline dwolfman

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #21 on: February 23, 2009, 10:03:27 PM »
Agreed TriniItalian. The man is an employee of Sunderland who was given leave for a specific reason, to play a football match for T&T. That is done then it is time to report back to the job, regardless of if he is on the bench or not. It's all part of being a professional.

Offline Quags

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #22 on: February 23, 2009, 10:12:13 PM »
if you working in factory maybe ,but yah cyah talk to me like that haha..I go tell my boss ,i have stay ah extra week ,he might be vex but say what .he have to cool he herbs.

BUT YOU Right ,you young kids listen ,know yah role .
« Last Edit: February 23, 2009, 10:14:08 PM by Quagmire »

Offline dinho

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #23 on: February 26, 2009, 04:17:35 PM »
i think Keane was a victim of his own personality and the success Sunderland is seeing now is as a result of players being able to relax a little more and get on with their game.

The squad look happier, men doing jokey passa passa celebration..  men bonding...

i always find Keane always had a problem and kept things a lil too tense. Didn't seem like the type of manager willing to deal with egos or build confidence, and seem quick to pull down men. It start to show in men game like Danny Collins with some rudimentary mistakes that was costing them points. Them kinda mistakes are always a reflection of a confidence issue.

that asshole attitude would work in the championship when you have no name players in your side and you are the big fish, but when you dealing with bigger players with bigger egos on this level, you have to have some shrewd man management skills.

I get the impression Sbragia just letting man do what they want, which is fine for now but he just better be careful not to let things get out of hand. Its about balance.
         

Offline kev

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #24 on: February 27, 2009, 01:54:24 AM »
omarldinho Collins must of had a confidence issue with at least another 4 managers aswell, because mistakes litter his game.  As with all mediorce players they may go a few games where they make less mistakes but mistakes will always return.  There was one glaring one at Arsenal and another bad one on top of that (Van Persie miss, Arsharvin saved by Fulop), the only reason no mention is that both shots went just wrong side of the post, if it had of went in it would of been another poor game for him.  Collins needs replacing its as simple as that and moved to the bench.

Offline Ngozi

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #25 on: February 27, 2009, 06:41:16 PM »
Fact: Sunderland have doubled their points total since Keane left.

I think he comes across as a really good player who can't handle the fact that he didn't do well in his first try as a manager. A classier person would have kept this all under wraps instead of running to a newspaper for a "tell-all."  :beermug:


Fact is where they are today is based on the groundwork  Keane has put down ..... not because Ricky is an easier going guy...... people shouldn't get it twisted

Offline WestCoast

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Re: Roy Keane breaks his slience!
« Reply #26 on: February 27, 2009, 07:01:12 PM »
Fact: Sunderland have doubled their points total since Keane left.

I think he comes across as a really good player who can't handle the fact that he didn't do well in his first try as a manager. A classier person would have kept this all under wraps instead of running to a newspaper for a "tell-all."  :beermug:


Fact is where they are today is based on the groundwork  Keane has put down ..... not because Ricky is an easier going guy...... people shouldn't get it twisted
Ngozi, I feel so too
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
Lord Chesterfield
(1694 - 1773)

 

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