Keane eyes window opening

THOSE who claim Roy Keane is a reformed man since swapping his shinpads for a suit and tie gathered more evidence for their cause on Saturday when the Sunderland manager sauntered into the Stamford Bridge press room half-an-hour before his side’s meeting with Chelsea.

There was a time when Keane would not even have countenanced leaving the sanctuary of the dressing room prior to an A-list game but the Cork man is a more studious soul these days. He wanted to watch the last 20 minutes of Portsmouth’s victory at Aston Villa, mindful, no doubt, of Saturday’s date with Martin O’Neill’s side.

The cynics would suggest Keane had already written off the visit to west London as a lost cause and that theory gained an element of credibility when he admitted it was games against the Premier League’s third tier of sides which would determine Sunderland’s fate this season.