If Keane wants to return he must learn how to manage himself first

HAVING walked out on Sunderland, Roy Keane feels ready to return to football management. Some club, desperate for success and seduced by his status as a man associated with success, is likely to be foolish enough to grant him his wish. Foolish because Keane does not appear to have the maturity to replicate the type of success as a manager that he achieved as an outstanding player.

Immediately, I realise I’m going to be hit with volleys of abuse for daring to offer criticism of Keane. Nobody arouses the passions more than he and this persuades some people to jump blindly to his defence. His achievements as a player — which cannot be denied because he is almost certainly the most successful Irish footballer of all time — are always cited as if that somehow makes his behaviour immune from criticism. His record as a manager — in achieving promotion for Sunderland in his first season in charge — is also produced, but truth is that while it was reasonably impressive, it was hardly unique, especially given the amount of money he had been given to build his squad of players.

My problem with Keane stems from his own comments — and here let me state I still think he was right about the Irish team’s inadequate preparations for the 2002 World Cup and that Mick McCarthy failed in the admittedly very difficult task of keeping Keane involved.

Last weekend The Irish Times published an interview with Keane that, amidst an extraordinary amount of waffle, provided a few insights, albeit not as favourable to Keane as was intended apparently.

Paradoxically, it is the qualities for which Keane is most often lauded that simultaneously are among his greatest weaknesses. Straight talking and strongly-held beliefs are fine and good but not if the thinking behind them is weak, petty and malicious.

Most distasteful of all was his decision to use the interview to settle a score with former player Clive Clarke who was very lucky to survive two heart attacks while playing a game for another club, while on loan to it from Sunderland, having fallen out of favour with Keane.

Clarke, in the course of an interview after his recovery, made some mildly critical comments about Keane’s style of management, particularly his way of dealing with people, suggesting it did not necessarily get the best out of them and was more useful to Keane in giving vent to his own frustrations. This has been endorsed subsequently by a number of other players, but Keane only sees people who differ with his point of view on man management as weak rather than considering whether others may have a point. He is entitled to that opinion, of course, as his ultimate success as a manager largely depends on whether he is right or wrong, but he was not entitled to the cheap shot he aimed at Clarke.

“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 dressing-room. He wasn’t there! How does he know? Clown!” Ho, bloody, ho. Note how Keane remembers Clarke’s trauma in the context of a match Sunderland lost at Luton and how he follows his unfunny comment by denigrating Clarke’s knowledge of what he was talking about and by then calling him a clown.

The offence caused to Keane is more important than the fact that Clarke nearly died. Keane spent much of the rest of the interview commenting on people who had “class” because they had shown courtesy to him upon his leaving Sunderland, failing to realise he exhibited none of that quality himself with his offensive comments about a young man of just 27.

Just how self-centred can Keane be? “Crass” rather than “class” would be a better description of Keane’s own behaviour. But then what would you expect from a man who in 2001 deliberately set out to injure an opposing player named Alf-Inge Haaland and later boasted about it in his ghosted autobiography?

He excused his taking of retribution by referring to the latter’s admittedly highly distasteful sneer at Keane in 1999 when the Corkman lay seriously injured in a match. He failed to recall that he had injured himself with his own lunge at Haaland, not that he had been the victim of an assault.

Such contradictions often elude Keane. In his Irish Times interview he complains bitterly about the role of agents in setting up transfers and how difficult it is to talk to players because of them.

Yet, without any apparent appreciation of the irony, he relates that when he decided to leave Sunderland he rang his own agent, the solicitor Michael Kennedy, and told him to sort it all out.

He then complains that he didn’t get a phone call from the new owner, Ellis Short, to ask him how he was or to talk him out of it when it seems, judging by the interview with The Irish Times at least, he hadn’t been man enough to ring Short himself to resign. Then again, Keane thinks it was appropriate to duck Short’s phone calls after a particularly bad 4-1 home defeat against Bolton, his last match in charge. The man who affected not to be too affected by results wasn’t in the mood. Then his description of his upset at the tone of Short’s comments towards him is little short of hilarious.

A man who makes a virtue of his tough approach to his players — he is not there to get them smiling but to do a job, no matter what the chairman Niall Quinn wants — is deeply sensitive not just to harsh words aimed at him, but any questions posed to him.

HE RESENTS that Short wants him to live near the job and to be available more readily, but fails to mention he was being paid about £2 million a year to do the job, the type of money bank bosses make and requires a little bit more availability. He had spent more than £30m of Short’s money last summer, so it’s not too surprising the American might be a little concerned about it.

It all goes to show how often Keane is demanding of others, but fails to live up to similar measures and standards when they are applied to himself.

But despite his claims that he was learning and that he was compromising, there was little evidence of it from his behaviour or from his subsequent comments. While Keane clearly feels he was better off away from Sunderland, and he is probably right because he has revealed he was unable to cope with the pressures, the club, while grateful for his role in securing promotion, are doing better without him since.

Keane has many admirable qualities, including an insatiable desire to win and a willingness to work hard to achieve his aims. But sometimes you need more than that, especially in management. You have to appreciate the failings and weaknesses of others and find the ways that best suit getting the most from limited resources. Hopefully, Keane will learn from this or else his future managerial career will frustrate him and not deliver anything like the success or satisfaction he got from his playing career.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.