THE INDEPENDENT - MORE MINUSES, FEWER PLUSES
It was only a matter of time before the man once defined as the beating heart of Manchester United would begin to stem the club's life force as damagingly as an embolism. Which explains why Sir Alex Ferguson reacted so peremptorily at United's Carrington training base on Friday after reportedly advising Roy Keane, his long-time captain and confessor, that he was "tearing this club apart".
Two potentially lethal chemical agents, both well capable of spontaneous combustion, have reacted benignly together for over a dozen years. But a sequence of events, which can be traced back to July when the Irishman was omitted from the pre-season tour of the Far East, has had the same effect as pounding them furiously with a pestle. Ferguson recognised the perils. Roy was turning from his defiant, resourceful Rover to a Roy of the Disunited.
It was always a difficult equation to master for Ferguson: on the positive side, the power, thrust and sheer magnitude of Keane's performances. On the negative side , his pub-brawling, player-stamping, referee-har-anguing, supporter-ridiculing, and finally manager-under-mining character. Ultimately, the balance shifted too far towards a minus.
It is said that the Irishman departed with tears in his eyes. The more rational of United's followers will not submit to similar melancholy. Ferguson is an experienced advocate of footballing euthanasia. It is part of the natural order in the game. The Scot has had no compunction in the past about culling those - Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis, Jaap Stam, David Beckham - who had become cult figures to the Old Trafford faithful. In some cases, notably Beckham and Stam, the jury is still not unanimous in its verdict, but Ferguson's judgement has largely been sound. If only, many will contend, his eye for a replacement had been so acute - one of the explanations for the wrath of Keane of late.
THE OBSERVER - HALF THE PREMIERSHIP INTERESTED IN KEANE
Aston Villa, Bolton, Everton and West Brom head a long queue of clubs battling to secure Roy Keane's services after the Irishman's controversial departure from Manchester United.
The midfielder looks unlikely to rush into immediately reaching an agreement with any new club and will instead take several weeks to assess his options. Fifa rules on player movements mean he cannot sign or play for any other team until the transfer window opens again on 1 January.
Keane's lawyer and advisor, Michael Kennedy, has spent the past 48 hours since news of Keane's shock departure emerged talking to managers, chairmen and chief executives from more than half the Premiership's 20 teams.
Most of those are among the smaller clubs, so Keane may have to get used to turning out for a team whose first priority is staying in the Premiership, not winning it.
Bolton manager Sam Allardyce and Wigan chairman Dave Whelan yesterday joined Portsmouth in publicly declaring their interest in recruiting the temperamental 34-year-old whose talent helped United secure a Treble, two Doubles and four other Premiership titles during his 12 years there. 'If Paul Jewell came to me and said to me, "Can we sign Roy Keane?", I'll back him,' said Whelan.
Observer Sport understands that Aston Villa are 'very keen' to hire Keane; Bryan Robson, West Brom manager and Keane's former team-mate, is trying to personally woo his old midfield partner; Everton boss David Moyes has registered his interest in the player; Middlesbrough manager Steve McClaren, who knows Keane well from his time as Sir Alex Ferguson's assistant, is studying the situation.
THE OBSERVER - RAGING AGAINST THE MACHINE
Real greatness is spread pretty thinly around football and when you have been great, as Keane unquestionably has, people never forget it even when confronted by a much more mundane reality. Look at the number of clubs prepared to give Gazza a chance towards the end of his playing career. No one really imagined he would roll back the years and put aside his personal problems to gambol around the pitch as of old. You were still watching a legend, that was the main thing, even if you were getting the Vegas show rather than the Sun Records years. Genuine, card-carrying legends are few and far between, you don't see too many in a lifetime.
Unless you happen to be Manchester United. The club of Busby, Best, Charlton, Law, Beckham, Cantona and others has more legends than you could shake a stick at. Keane can now be added to that list, Wayne Rooney seems certain to join it sooner rather than later and despite his present difficulties Sir Alex Ferguson will be up there in big flashing lights as soon as the time comes to look back on his whole career rather just the past few matches.
No, the self-styled biggest club in the universe, the one that christened its home ground The Theatre of Dreams, has no excuse for being star-struck or sentimental. Yet that is what appears to have happened with Keane. The divorce may be directly traceable to heated rows between captain and manager following the former's ill-advised punditry at the start of this month, but the real question is why Ferguson has clung so tenaciously to Keane for so long. By his own admission, Ferguson has been searching for a replacement these past few years, since it became clear how compromised Keane's contribution would be by surgery, yet strangely no business resulted.
It is true that Eric Djemba-Djemba and Kleberson came and went, though those two acquisitions looked more like crafty attempts to prolong Keane's playing career than serious moves to replace him. So did turning Alan Smith into a defensive midfielder. It is as if United were afraid of upstaging their captain. Ferguson has frequently complained there are no more Roy Keanes out there, which in a strict sense is true, but in a world that contains Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Michael Ballack, Michael Essien, Thomas Gravesen and Patrick Vieira the biggest club in the universe does not seem to have been searching high and low. United are currently monitoring Ballack, so they will be aware he is being steered in the direction of Real Madrid by Franz Beckenbauer, but even if Ferguson clinches his signature for next season it will be an odd sort of replacement given that Ballack is already 29.
THE SUNDAY TIMES - END OF THE AFFAIR
In the end, the exit happened with almost funereal solemnity. A meeting at Manchester United’s training ground between four men; Sir Alex Ferguson, United’s chairman David Gill, Roy Keane and his friend and adviser, Michael Kennedy. There wasn’t a word spoken in anger, not one raised voice during the last 30 minutes Keane would spend at Carrington.
Keane had sensed what was coming from two brief conversations two days before. Having recovered from injury and come through four training sessions, he expected to make his return for United’s reserves against West Bromwich Albion on Thursday. But the day before, one of the physios who works with the reserves told him he wasn’t in the team.
The rift would not have ended in separation if it hadn’t been for the censored MUTV interview of two weeks ago. So many mistakes were made: Keane was allowed to do the piece even though it was certain he would speak his mind. Then Gill and Ferguson agreed the interview should not be broadcast and made a small problem much greater.
From there it temporarily got better before it worsened again. Keane explained what he had said to his fellow players and they were okay about it. Ferguson took a different view, less conciliatory view than his players. He felt Keane should apologise to the players, a request that was never going to be agreed. Nothing better reflected the gulf that now existed between manager and player because Keane felt let down by Ferguson’s reaction to the MUTV controversy. Ferguson had publicly criticised Keane for saying things that should have remained inside the dressing room.
Keane doesn’t do diplomacy and at the key Thursday morning meeting after the MUTV controversy, he couldn’t hold himself back when Queiroz spoke about the need for loyalty. From where Keane stood, Queiroz had left United for Real Madrid and had no right to lecture others on loyalty. That putting down of the assistant manager in front of the other players may well have been the final straw.
What is undisputable is that Keane saw the end coming. On the Thursday evening, two and a half weeks ago, the player rang Kennedy and said he felt the time had come for him to leave United. Kennedy tried to dissuade him, but Keane seemed adamant. He asked Kennedy to prepare a statement announcing his departure from the club. Kennedy agreed to prepare the statement on condition that Keane would sleep on it and confirm his attentions in the morning. There was no follow-up call in the morning and Kennedy believed another crisis had been averted. The reprieve would be shortlived.
They will remember Keane and they will miss him. There is a story told about the Monday after the Middlesbrough game, before Keane played the pundit on MUTV. It concerned a moment in the changing room at Carrington after Kieran Richardson told his teammates about ordering a Bentley Continental. Keane, it is said, heard the young player talk of his new car and related it to the 4-1 thrashing suffered by the team at the Riverside two days before. He then gave his teammate a severe dressing-down. Richardson, it is said, later cancelled his order for the new car.
Whether Richardson did or did not act on Keane’s stridently delivered advice, it is certain the former captain yielded enormous influence on his teammates. Now Keane is looking for a new club. He lost his last battle at the club, beaten by the man with the ultimate power. But if this turns out to be Ferguson’s last victory, it shall be no victory at all.