Roy to Man United: I gave a bad ball and shout was ‘how much?’

Time is a great healer, so they say, its medicinal properties strikingly on show on the box this week as Roy Keane and Kenny Dalglish amicably revisited the transfer row which had put them at odds with each other in the summer of 1993.

(Mind you, that there are strict limitations to those healing powers was also evident in the same programme, as Keane and Thierry Henry had to agree to disagree about which set of players was most culpable for the volatility which characterised the meetings of Manchester United and Arsenal back in their playing days).

The protracted saga of how Keane had arrived at the brink of becoming Roy of the Rovers before Alex Ferguson intervened at the 11th hour to crush Blackburn’s hopes by making the 21-year-old Nottingham Forest player an offer he couldn’t refuse — at a then record-breaking cost to Manchester United of £3.75m (€4.1m) — had dominated the back pages in the run-up to the new Premier League season 24 years ago.