RED ISSUE EXCLUSIVE

This weekend, Roy Keane and all Manchester United fans will be on tenterhooks as the Football Association digests his already infamous autobiography. At some point next week, the F.A. will announce what they intend to do about the
supposed admission within the covers that Keane intentionally sought to 'do' Alf
Inge Haaland in a Manchester derby match. Greater Manchester Police will also
be popping down to WH Smiths to see if they can reactivate a criminal dossier
originally opened and then closed within days of the original 'tackle'. United fans, dismayed by the prospects of possible civil, criminal and F.A. proceedings
against their talismanic leader, are asking themselves a simple question: how
could such a sorry state of affairs come to pass? Inquiries behind the scenes at
Old Trafford, in publishing houses and with specialist solicitors have revealed
that the episode is more cock-up than conspiracy – and that the escape route for Keano lies in the hands of an Irish Examiner columnist.

Most observers have jumped to the wrong conclusion about whom is to blame for the fiasco, but understandably so. When manager Alex Ferguson twice told the press after the scandal broke that the book had been "supervised all along by the Club" and had been "checked by our lawyers", he mis-spoke. A misunderstood briefing of the manager was at fault: in fact, the only lawyers to check the book were the publishers', who were merely looking for possible libels. But when Fergie was consequently informed by Keane's people that the tome had been 'lawyered', he wrongly took the meaning thereof to be that the club's own legal advisers, Chapman's, had been through the work looking for possible embarrassments and indiscretions on behalf of the Club. They had not.

Indeed, the only official at United who saw the manuscript before the serialisation exploded was Ferguson himself. I have ascertained that Roy Keane, in a generous personal gesture to his boss, made sure Sir Alex received the manuscript (minus its final McCarthyite chapter) at least 6 weeks before
serialisation began. Roy did so despite the fact that serialisable books of this kind are normally subject to incredibly strict controls and embargoes by publishers, who are anxious to avoid injunctions and leaks. Keane did this favour to the boss at some personal risk to himself, given that his publishers might well have taken a dim view of his generosity. For at the very same time as Fergie was digesting the book on holiday at his South of France villa, publishers Penguin were steadfastly refusing all entreaties from United officials to be shown the book.

United PR chief Patrick Harveson became increasingly frantic as publication date approached, knowing full well that someone as honest as Keane, alongside
someone as uncompromising as Dunphy, were unlikely to have produced a bog-standard lukewarm player's memoir. Indeed, the very fact that Keano had chosen not to publish with United's own publishing arm, André Deutche, but instead to go to an outside independent organisation, was an obvious signal that this would not be the kind of book that United would have been happy to sanction under their own aegis.

The Jaap Stam Affair of only a year ago loomed large in United's thinking: here
had been another independently-minded player going to an outside firm with his tales, the publication of which had caused all sorts of aggravation inside and
outside the Club and political ramifications that are still ongoing. Moreover, after Stam's book came out, Ferguson had announced that in future all players' books would be vetted by the Club to prevent such a fiasco reoccurring.

Unfortunately for the Club's hierarchy, Ferguson's announcement was flawed in
two respects. Firstly, players would not necessarily allow such an edict to be
incorporated into contracts, thus rendering it redundant; secondly, Keano's deal with Penguin was signed long before the Ferguson pronouncement and could not therefore be subsequently countermanded. Furthermore, for a book to cause a
breach of a player's existing contract, it would mean proving that the player had 'brought the Club into disrepute', a difficult charge to make stick and one that
certainly does not apply in Keane's case – the only arguable disrepute in this
case applies to Keane himself, not to United in general.

United's only other fallback is a general injunction passed more than twenty
years ago that all staff need to vet anything they say or write through the Club, an absurd regulation that has been thoroughly ignored by all concerned ever since and which United officials now admit is entirely unenforceable– not to mention the fact that it has been undermined by the manager himself via his own unvetted books.

United, therefore, did not have a leg to stand on when they demanded sight of
the script from Penguin; the publishers, quite rightly, had to honour their
obligation to the authors to protect their integrity and contracts. Not that this
prevented United from trying to heap the blame on Penguin when the story
broke: but the fact remains that Ferguson himself read the book in June and
therefore had an opportunity to approach Roy, informally, as his friend and
manager and request any alterations, a request one assumes Keane would've
been well-disposed towards granting. After all, what was the main reason for
Keano slipping the book under the table to Fergie in the first place? To make
sure that Alex was personally happy with what he'd said, that the Stam imbroglio would not be repeated and, I am told, to hear Fergie's opinion on the book's worth as a fellow author. Fergie, as he has since made clear, enjoyed and approved the book in his role as manager and made no requests for changes.

Sadly, being layman rather than lawyer, he did not fully grasp the danger
inherent in Keane's alleged admission regarding Haaland. One might argue that
any layman with a modicum of intelligence should have seen the obvious threat
in such a paragraph going to print. But here the plot thickens, for it does indeed appear that Fergie, Penguin and Keano's agent Michael Kennedy all saw that
this passage was, to say the least, staggering in its apparent brutal honesty.
Remarkably, however, Kennedy – who is lawyer – and Fergie both took the view, according to my United official source, that everyone in football had assumed at the time it was committed that Keano's tackle on Haaland had carried some intent. They further noted that the FA at the time had punished him, that the media had reported the tackle as probably intentional and that it was all now water under the bridge. Moreover, the police had investigated the complaints laid by City fans after the match and the Crown Prosecution Service had chosen not to proceed. Therefore, it was concluded, it would be 'safe' to now be honest about the affair rather than either lie in the book or affect a hypocritical silence.

Ferguson, Kennedy and all the officials I have spoken to concur that the book is superb, rivetingly honest and deeply fascinating and that the Haaland 'admission' takes its proper contextual place amidst all that. A United official nevertheless conceded to me that "in hindsight, we were probably wrong to take the view that the Haaland passage was safe", before going on to lambast the FA for its hypocrisy. The FA are certainly emerging with little credit; it would appear that Keano's offence would not be making the tackle but for talking about it.

So whom to blame, given all the above? Keano, for writing an honest account
and not cheating the book-buyers? Surely not: indeed, in giving the book to
Fergie despite the official embargo, he has shown what a man of honour he is.
Dunphy, for not counselling his charge to take it easy and for dressing the book in such aggressively punchy rhetoric? Of course not: he isn't Keane's nanny, and by all accounts he has done his subject full justice (as befits a man who wrote the best-ever player's book – 'Only A Game?' – and the best-ever United book – 'A Strange Kind Of Glory.') How about Fergie, the sole O.T. book-reviewer, for failing to sound the alarm bells? Perhaps he was a little blind to the possibilities, but then so were all the other figures involved who would be expected to have the protection of Keane as a priority. If they and Fergie are guilty of anything, it is of having faith in the justice of the F.A., a faith which the Cantona Affair of 1995 had already demonstrated will always be misplaced.

What will happen to Roy now? I have talked to United officials and their verdict is as follows: they do not expect City or Haaland to take the matter all the way into court but they DO expect both a fine and ban from the F.A. Most importantly of all, they and the solicitors I have spoken to do not think any police enquiries will result in criminal proceedings. Why? Surely because of a superbly-timed and well-executed intervention from Eamonn Dunphy. In London's 'Observer' days after the scandal broke, he floated the suggestion that Roy himself may not have made the admission as it is written in the book and that he, the ghostwriter, might have been indulging in 'artistic license'. This 'confession' is utterly central to any case against Keane.

Let us consider the unlikely scenario whereby Haaland does actually proceed
with a civil action, or gives his consent to the police for them to press criminal
charges. (English police cannot bring such an action without the alleged victim's
active co-operation, and United have reason to believe that such co-operation
will not be forthcoming.) For a criminal or civil action to be guaranteed success, it will have to be proved that Keane himself made the admission, rather than
Dunphy. All Keane would have to do in such a scenario is to deny that he made
the admission and to agree with Dunphy's suggestion that it has all been a case
of over-elaboration. Unless prosecution authorities can provide, via subpoena,
tapes or proper paperwork featuring Keane saying that he 'did' Haaland
deliberately, the case will have to fall back onto merely circumstantial evidence.
That is not to say the case will still fail, for one cannot gainsay a jury, but the CPS would have nothing else to add to the prosecutory evidence file that they already have, a file which was lean enough for them to be forced to halt proceedings back in 2001. That would suggest a criminal charge would not even be brought, given that a case has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. A civil action needs only to convince a jury on 'the balance of probabilities' but at least such a case could only lead to a fine were it to go in Haaland's favour, whereas a criminal case could result in a custodial sentence.

The FA, meanwhile, will proceed by their own opaque rules although any
punishment they may impose is subject to appeal and ultimately judicial review, if United or Keane believe that proper rules of evidence have not been followed. I would expect, following the briefings I have had, that United will accept a ban's imposition as long as it is not as onerous as, say, Cantona's was: moreover, I would expect the canny Ferguson to immediately send Roy off for his operation during that ban period, thus reducing the actual effect on United's season. The press will doubtless scream blue murder at that point but after the way United were humiliated and misled by the FA in 1995, the Club will have little sympathy with any argument that they are undermining F.A. authority in so doing.

There remains some unfinished business. Firstly, David Beckham has just
announced that his proper autobiography will be published by HarperCollins next year. Some British tabloid hacks have trumpeted confidently, yet unfoundedly, that United will thoroughly vet this book in the light of the Keane Affair but a spokesman for the publisher told me that "we are not obliged to show a copy of the transcript to United." Quite: and that is one of the reasons why David will have chosen to go independent rather than let United publish a sanitised version themselves. Stam, and now Keane, have exposed a loophole that United seemingly cannot close. The players are too big to be restrained; they will have their say whether their weakened employers like it or not. Besides, when they leave the Club, they can do as they please in any event; for example, many at United are not looking forward to Lee Sharpe's imminent book, sold for even bigger bucks than Keano's to a tabloid this week. Perhaps the clubs, emulating Tony Blair and the Royal Family, may try to enforce the 'law of confidence' in future - but that won't fly, not as long as managers continue to knock out their own tell-all tomes. What's sauce for the goose, after all…

Secondly, thanks to Ray Bradbury and Francois Truffaut, we all know that paper
burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. If there are indeed any pieces of paper
containing admissions by Roy that he did 'do' Haaland, it would of course be an
offence to deliberately destroy them. All I can suggest is this. When I was
working on Harry Gregg's ghosted autobiography this year, I kept copies of all
the original, pre-tarting-up tape-transcripts close by my little stove in the
basement where I work. I needed to keep the material in case Harry queried
anything I'd written as being too far from what he'd said originally. But I was also aware that if, one day, any post-publication legal problems arose that threatened Harry in the precise way that Keano is threatened now, it would be very convenient if I were able to accidentally trip up and knock the transcripts into the stove, whose dial went way past 451 degrees. Accidents do happen, after all.

Ask Alf Inge Haaland…

© RICHARD KURT, deputy editor of 'Red Issue' magazine. 28.08.02. Not to be
used in whole or in part without express prior permission of the author.
Sourced largely off-record with MUFC officials, publishing executives and a
solicitor.