There's more than one Keano

IT WAS said that, back in his playing days with Leeds United, Jack Charlton used to keep a little black book in which were inscribed the names of certain opponents with whom he planned to settle a few scores.

In the light of the remarkable events of the year just ending, it’s tempting to think Roy Keane has his own little book, but this time a white one containing the names of all those former adversaries with whom he’s willing to mend fences.

First, back in August, there was the eye-rubbing sight of Keane and Niall Quinn, beaming for the cameras and shaking hands in the Stadium of Light, as the Dubliner and his Drumaville Consortium pulled off the coup of the year by persuading the Cork man to take up his first job in football management at Sunderland.

Then, after dropping a number of hints that it was time to break the shackles of the past on other fronts, Keane, and the man perceived to be his nemesis, Mick McCarthy, finally made peace ahead of the meeting of Sunderland and Wolves at Molineux in November, turning what both feared might have been “a circus” into an occasion when the pre-match handshake and post-match embrace were no more than brief bookends to another Friday night of football.

Throw in some best wishes aimed in the direction of Steve Staunton, as the latter wrestled with his own management issues and, in the space of just a few months, Keane has taken huge strides in repairing relations almost destroyed in the white heat of Saipan, when he dubbed Quinn and Staunton “cowards” and “muppets” and told Mick McCarthy that he’d never rated him as a player, a manager or a man.

What next? A bouquet of red roses signed ‘From Roy with love’ to Alf Inge Haaland on Valentine’s Day? Watch this space.

For comedy writers and cynics alike, the apparent rebirth of Roy Keane may be a godsend. But, in truth, the man deserves nothing but respect for tackling his own demons as robustly as he ever tackled anyone on the field of play. Whatever personal journey he has embarked upon, it has clearly taken him to a more enlightened place, one in which standing on principle — as he has always maintained he did in Saipan — no longer requires the nursing of bitter resentments.

Which is not to conclude, as many do, that Keane has mellowed. Perhaps better instead to say he is wiser, more reflective and more in control of his emotions — as it happens, not bad attributes to have in a profession as potentially all-consuming and head-wrecking as football management. And especially in the job of managing Sunderland AFC, a club which, to put it gently, hasn’t always delivered on the giddy expectations of its passionate fan base in the north-east of England. The word from the Stadium of Light is that while Keane doesn’t favour the hair-dryer approach of his own former boss Alex Ferguson, a few sharp words from the gaffer can still cut deep into players deemed not to be putting in the maximum effort — probably the biggest professional sin in the eyes of a footballer who always maintained that total commitment had taken him much further than skill alone in his playing career. But Keane also provides a sympathetic ear and knowledgeable advice for any player who raises honest concerns.

Keane recently offered this insight into his management style: “I’m trying to help the players. People expected me to come in shouting my mouth off all guns blazing and threatening this and that, but I’ve been far from that.

“A lot of people were looking at me as a player but I had to be the opposite to be a manager. I’ve had my moments. I’ve had to lay down the law once or twice with certain individuals but that’s down to the players looking after themselves and making it easier for me — they’ve got on with it.”

He also hinted, as many ex-players do, that — good results aside, of course — getting his boots mucky is the most rewarding part of the day to day job.

“The only time you can relax and enjoy yourself is on the training pitch,” he said. “The rest of the time is chasing people up, speaking to agents, managers, sorting travel and Christmas Day arrangements. Hundreds of things.”

We shouldn’t be surprised if Keane finds all the administrative attention to detail somewhat taxing, even if he is the man who famously gave us the mantra ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ So much has happened in his life in the last few months alone it’s easy to forget the year which ends with him firmly installed behind the desk in the manager’s office actually began with him opening up a new chapter in his playing career. That’s quite a leap in so short a space of time.

Just twelve months ago, Keane was making his debut for Celtic, as he looked to extend his life as a footballer beyond the years of glory and ultimate disenchantment at Old Trafford. It wasn’t the happiest of introductions to Scottish football, giant-killers Clyde spoiling the day for the new Bhoy and his dumbstruck team mates.

Normal service was quickly restored on his home debut, as the Lisbon Lions stand was turned into a giant tricolour to welcome Keane to Paradise. But though the season would end with the player once again a title-winner, it was clear, in his own mind at least, age and injury were tolling the bell.

Speaking in Dublin at his annual press conference on behalf of the Guide Dogs For The Blind Charity, Keane dropped the first heavy hint that, come season’s end, he might have to hang up the boots for good.

“I played quite poorly at the weekend,” he said. “I wasn’t on top of my game. As you get older, there’s probably more games like that. There are days when I feel sharp. But there’s more and more average games. That’s the hard part. That’s what gets you in the end, I suppose.”

Celtic fans didn’t want to hear that. At Keane’s Manchester United testimonial at Old Trafford in May, they put on a massive show of support which helped make the occasion one of the most memorable of its kind ever staged. The message from the faithful was a hopeful ‘see you next season’. But from Keane, his final wave to the stands felt more like an emotional goodbye to all that. “At least there were no tears,” he quipped afterwards, “that would really have come back to haunt me.”

Confirmation Keane was retiring finally came in the middle of the World Cup, leaving those of us covering the action in Germany to ponder what might have been had Brian Kerr’s team managed to qualify.

On that day in early June, it seemed we wouldn’t be hearing from Roy Keane for quite some time. After all, just a couple months previously, he’d been telling his audience in Dublin that management “might be a few years away yet”. And in the meantime? “I’d like a bit of time away from football, time to do something different with my family.” Such as? “Travelling, skiing. (A pause, a little smile). Scuba diving.”

As we packed away our notebooks and switched off our tape-recorders we reflected that the football world would be a good deal duller for the foreseeable future. Since Roy Keane is nothing if not unpredictable, we should probably have known better.

But Roy as a scuba diver — albeit going against the flow and avoiding the dead fish, no doubt — was a lot easier to imagine than the stunning announcement in August that he’d gone in at the deep end with chairman Niall Quinn at struggling Sunderland. Here was an appointment so unlikely it almost had the ring of one of those mad, novelty bets, Keano placed just behind the Pope and Osama Bin Laden in the list of outlandish candidates.

But it was real enough and, within a few weeks, Roy Keane was writing the gaffer’s column in the Sunderland programme, telling the fans: “If you get 100% (from the players) things will be fine. I look back to when I was playing for Brian Clough, he kept things simple and that’s what I’m trying to do at the football club. There’s no need to complicate things.”

The immediate impact of Keane’s arrival at the club was a surge in confidence reflected in a series of encouraging results which, coupled with a shopping spree in the transfer window, helped create the sense of the proverbial sleeping giant finally coming to its senses.

But, after the initial honeymoon period, progress was not entirely smooth and it has only been in recent weeks the Black Cats have managed to put together a run of unbeaten results sufficient to put them within shouting distance of the play-off places.

However, Keane has openly acknowledged a couple of those results have masked poor performances and, with the blessing of Drumaville, he is expected to go back to the marketplace in January, Irish hotshot Anthony Stokes, on loan at Falkirk from Arsenal, being one highly-rated young star on whom the manager has kept a close eye.

Having taken Sunderland from the basement to the fringes of the play-offs, Keane’s performance to date as manager can only be accounted a success. But a qualified one — nobody will need to remind him the season is not even at the half-way stage yet and his first campaign as a football manager can’t be definitively assessed until summer comes rolling around again.

Sources at Drumaville have insisted promotion is not the benchmark by which Keane’s first season will be judged inside the boardroom of the Stadium of Light. This campaign, said one, was to be about consolidation, lifting the club above the survival stakes and establishing the base camp for a full-blooded assault on the summit next year.

But try telling that to the thousands of Wearsiders who will only feel the pain all the more acutely if it turns out to be a case of close but no cigar for Sunderland in May. And, as a born winner, Keane is bound to share that sentiment. Some recent typically plain-speaking comments to the effect that the Premiership is not all it’s cracked up to be, suggests the manager is anxious to get up there and prove a point sooner rather than later.

Keane going head to head with Fergie and Mourinho and Wenger would be something to behold, so even non-Wearsiders have reason to hope he takes his Sunderland team all the way at the first time of asking.

In the meantime, his continuing personal evolution has gone a long way to exploding the old caricature of the raging bad boy of football. As we leave behind a year of change and surprise in the life of Roy Keane, and anticipate who knows what in the 12 months to come, one thing seems pretty clear: contrary to what the song says, there’s more than one Keano.