Tired excuse, Roy, more a failure to prepare

FAIL to prepare, prepare to fail has been one of Roy Keane’s favourite mantras throughout his football career.

It’s why he’s changed everything at the Stadium of Light from the pitch dimensions to the colour of the skirting boards in the players’ tunnel.

So I was bemused to hear the following from the gaffer after our defeat at home to Liverpool, then: “We were tiring in the last 10 or 15 minutes, which I take responsibility for, because maybe we should have had one or two more tougher games in pre-season.”

It wasn’t a surprise we looked so sluggish. By the time we lined up on Saturday it had been nine days since our last match, a 6-0 stroll in the park against Athlone Town. Our pre-season trips across the Irish Sea are great for supporters, but unless we can find some quality opposition to test us, they’re a waste of time as anything other than promotional tools. The first game of our summer was against Sporting Lisbon, where we were quite impressive. Ajax apart, our opponents have gradually become weaker as the summer progressed and the season approached.

Whether this means the club ditching the Guinness missions in order to find more testing warm-up games, or incorporating them much earlier in the programme, I’m not sure.

The main reason we made use of our substitutes on Saturday was because players replaced were too tired to continue. Under Keane we’ve been a side who are now famous for late goals due to a never-say-die attitude and supreme fitness. But against Liverpool we looked too knackered to mount a comeback after the Torres tornado.

Fitness worries aside, until the Spaniard’s 83rd minute goal, we’d done enough to earn ourselves a point. In the past I’ve been no fan of a five-man midfield, but the quality Keane has brought into the centre of the park over the summer means we’re now able to make it work.

The free-flowing football in the first half against Liverpool was the best I’ve seen at the club since the manager’s arrival. But the middle of the park is the last of our worries at the moment.

Our playing staff has 18 midfield players with squad numbers, excluding El-Hadji Diouf, Daryl Murphy, Anthony Stokes and Michael Chopra, who’ve all played more games as wingers than up front. Much more urgent, however, is the need to sign a centre-forward, a left back and a centre-half. Benni McCarthy is reportedly Sunderland-bound and would be a decent partner for Kenwyne Jones, but I’m not sure how much use he’d be as a lone man in Jones’ absence.

At the back, we lined up against Liverpool in a pretty makeshift manner. Chimbonda at right back was the only big money buy in there, but has yet to settle. The rest of the back four was made up of a right-back at left-back (Bardsley), and a central defensive partnership made up of a converted centre-forward from Chester City and a former right-back signed on a free transfer from Gillingham.

It’s to Danny Collins’ and Nyron Nosworthy’s credit that they have played so well in our time back in the Premier League, but there’s no way that our current back four will be capable of taking us to the next level that Quinn and Keane talk about.

Despite all of this, I’m fairly happy. It’s hard to be annoyed when you’ve matched a top four side for the majority of a game and for long periods played the better football. Had our fitness levels been there and we’d completed our summer spending, we would have certainly snatched a point.

As it was, Keane has not made use of the transfer market in time for our opening game and failed to prepare the squad physically. And for a man so hell-bent on perfect preparation and fighting till the death, he’ll not be happy with himself. Roy, you have until the end of August to plug the three gaps you’ve known about since May.

Martyn McFadden (www.a-love-supreme.com)