RK Watch: The Return
Times: Roy Keane, Old Trafford, the return. There will be chants and songs and cheers and perhaps, deep down, a kernel of emotion, barely acknowledged. “I’m not expecting the red carpet, hugs and kisses,” the Sunderland manager said, although each of them would be freely given if they were not so alien to his character. The truth of the matter is that Manchester United and Keane have never separated.
Aside from all the former team-mates the Irishman has assembled on Wearside – from Raimond van der Gouw and Mike Clegg, both on his coaching staff, to Kieran Richardson, Paul McShane, Liam Miller, Dwight Yorke, Andrew Cole and Danny Higginbotham – Sunderland’s new culture is pure United, pure red. Prepare, win, move on and win again.
The ethos of United has been simmering in Keane this week as he contends with a bitter, scarring experience; it is 11 years since he was last confronted with three defeats in succession, but that has been Sunderland’s reward from matches against Wigan Athletic, Liverpool and Luton Town. Losing is not in his nature, just as the champions and his erstwhile club recoil from it.
“It is not nice, certainly not nice,” Keane said. “I have felt pretty bad, but you get on with it, come into work and smile. You try to be positive, even if you have to fake it. ‘Fake it to make it’, as they say. I’ve been doing that this week. I haven’t got a cat and I wouldn’t kick my dog anyway, but trying to get some sleep has been very difficult; it’s four or five in the morning and you’re wide awake.
“That’s what defeat does to you and I hope that never changes. I would hate to lose and sleep like a baby - if it really means something to you then you should not expect a good night’s sleep but it is up to me to make sure it doesn’t happen often. We have to cope with it. It’s how you react to different setbacks, whether it’s a bad injury or bad defeat and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Keane believes he “was definitely born to play for (United), just as I feel I was born to manage Sunderland,” and it is the ferocious, consuming desire for victory which bound him so successfully to Sir Alex Ferguson. It is also, finally, what drove them apart, when Keane’s soaring standards began to jar with “certain people,” at the club. Carlos Quieroz, Ferguson’s assistant, is thought to be one of them.
“At the end, I didn’t get on with a couple of people, I felt they’d taken their eye off the ball and felt, going back to the pre-season, that I was getting disrespected, it was then I knew I had to go,” he says in an interview broadcast on Setanta today. “My winning attitude was accepted at the club for years, but in the last few months certain people weren’t happy with what I was trying to do at the football club – it was only a matter of time before I was going to leave the club. You accept it and get on with it.”
Yet the bond had been formidable. “You work with people and see them close hand – whether it’s playing cards on the bus or in five-a-sides – and some people have it,” Keane said. “Alex Ferguson obviously has it; he has upset a lot of people over the years because of his winning attitude and mentality. He won’t let people get in his way and some people don’t like that.
“I actually don’t mind it, but because you need that as manager of a big club like Manchester United, you will upset people along the way and no doubt I have done that since I came here, whether its players or staff, you have to get that into the fabric of your club. But he looks well, as hungry and as fresh as ever. He wants to win. I love that in people, I identify with it and it was fantastic working with him.”
United felt like Keane’s destiny; he won seven league titles there, four FA Cups, the Champions League. “I just felt it was always going to happen, me going there,” he said. “I loved every minute of it, loved everything about being a Man United player, the players, the pressure, the club, working with the manager, working with the people in the background. It is a fantastic club and if any player gets the chance to play for them you have to take it. It is absolutely brilliant, a brilliant club.
“I’ll never get away from my history, because that’s part of my life and there is no getting away from that, but I’m here and I am enjoying it and the challenge is there for everyone to see. I haven’t got a clue how I’ll feel when I go back. United fans always seem to be generous with ex-players, I’ve played there and they have always given them a good reception and rightly so but we’ll see.
“There’s no point dwelling on it and getting all emotional. I won’t because I have too much on my plate to be worried about my own feelings and Sunderland is part of my future. The fans might give me applause but they’ll want to beat us and rightly so. You can’t get sidetracked by emotions in this game.”
