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Roy Keane the manager: The best stories from his first spell coaching Sunderland

Roy Keane appointed Sunderland manager in 2006

Roy Keane is one of the most talked-about pundits and players in English football, but what do we know about Roy Keane the manager?

The Irishman appeared close to returning to the dugout with former club Sunderland but after days (weeks? months?) of speculation it seems he is set to be overlooked for the role.

Roy Keane the player is one we all know and love and arguably the greatest to grace the Premier League. But what do we really know about Roy Keane the manager? We take a look at stories from those who played for him, employed him, and from the man himself to try to paint the picture.

'You're sh**, but enjoy being sh**'

In his book Rise of the Underdog - My Life Inside Football, Danny Higginbotham revealed Keane's pre-match team-talk ahead of out-of-form Sunderland's Premier League clash with Aston Villa.

According to Higginbotham, Keane told his players: "Listen lads. Basically, you're sh**. Try and enjoy the game. You're probably going to get beat. But just enjoy being sh**."
Higginbotham continues: "Then he just walked out. Those words have got to be insulting to any professional, no matter who they come from, and I'll admit it served as the perfect motivation to get out there and prove him wrong.

"I scored after 10 minutes and we were leading at half-time. We ended up drawing.

"Villa were doing okay and Roy's reverse psychology had worked - on me, at least. He's a far cleverer person than people realise or would like to acknowledge.
"He knew what he was doing when he said that, he knew the reaction he would get from some of us, and that was a trick right out of the Brian Clough handbook.
"It was bizarre at the time, but turned out to be a stroke of genius."

'Sit the f**k down!'

Sunderland were an even more chaotic club when Keane joined the first time than they are now, and that meant a flurry of transfer activity.

Within a day of being appointed manager, Keane had signed six players and that meant a bloated squad needed to be trimmed down. One of those to be shown the door was winger Andy Welsh, who didn't have the best of experiences.

"I'd just signed a three-year deal in the summer," Welsh said. "I remember going into Roy Keane in one of the first meetings after this had happened - sorry he pulled me in - and he said there are a few clubs come in on loan for you.

"I knew there were a few who wanted to sign me and he's gone - 'Plymouth, Dunfermline' - the furthest ones away and, no disrespect to those clubs, but at the time I didn't want to travel ridiculous distances.
"What happened was I said 'I'll just sit tight'.
"Then my agent said, 'Toronto are interested in signing you'. One of the players I knew from Sunderland - Carl Robinson - had just signed there. He got on the phone to me and said, 'look why don't you come - you need to play'.
"I wasn't having it. First of all I thought I'm not doing that. They invited me out to have a look at the club. I landed and it was minus 19!
"The reason I went over was because I wasn't involved at Sunderland at the time so I just pushed the boat out. They weren't going to pay me what I wanted so we had tea and toast in Toronto for four days.
"A few days nothing happened - then Toronto called me and said they'd give me what I wanted. I had a decision to make here. I spoke with the missus and said we'd give it a go.
"I went in to speak with Roy Keane, and I wasn't going to just walk away from a contract. I've gone in and sat down. From minute one it's just a tirade of abuse on me, right? I've turned down these other clubs and made him look silly.
"I said, 'I've not come here to be spoken to like that. I'm contracted with the club so if it's going to be like this I'll just leave it at that'.

"As I've gone to stand up he's gone 'Sit the f**k down.' He's started walking round the table and he's gone, 'I don't know who you think you are, walking out on me. I'm walking out on you.'

"He walked out and that was the last time I spoke to him."

'Not many people text me…'

Perhaps given Andy Welsh's experience, you can understand why some players will go to any lengths to avoid a confrontation with Roy Keane the manager.
Matty Taylor was one such player, as he recalled his meeting with Keane when he was trying to lure him to Sunderland from Portsmouth.
"I met him at the stadium, in the boardroom, gave him all the talk for an hour or two," Keane recalled. "He said he's got a lot to think about.
"I said: 'Of course, you take your time, it's a huge decision. I'll walk you down to the car park'. As we walked down he says, 'listen Roy, it's a huge decision, thanks for the chat'.
"I saw him walking to his car and say, 'brilliant, thanks for coming'. He turns his back and I've got a text, and not many people text me.
"It says, 'Hi Roy, it's Matty Taylor, 'I've decided to go to Bolton'. And I'm there waving him out the car park!"

The infamous kung-fu kick

This one is probably the story that is most associated with Roy Keane the manager.
In fact, words 'kung-fu kick' and 'tactics board' are rarely far behind whenever anyone in the media brings up the topic of Roy Keane's days in management.
We'll let Dwight Yorke tell it.
"After one game, he asked our kit manager if he can get the tactics board," Yorke wrote in his autobiography.
"'Sure', he said. The board goes up. And Keano takes a running jump and smashes it over with a kung fu kick. He screamed at Danny Collins. 'Never come and ask me for a contract again.'
"And then the captain, Dean Whitehead, is next. 'Captain? Captain? Some f***ing captain you'."

"I was trying to generate a bit of banter…"

With many younger soccer fans now simply knowing Roy Keane the television pundit, it's sometimes easy to forget that he was a quite phenomenal player himself.

One thing Keane the player and Keane the pundit have in common, though, is that goalkeepers have their work cut out to impress him.

Keane has described Peter Schmeichel as "over-rated" and had a fight in a team hotel hallway with the Dane, and his criticisms of current Man Utd 'keeper David De Gea are legendary.
Maybe, though, it is borne of him harbouring some secret goalkeeping talents of his own.

"I put the gloves on and I said that if they could get the ball past me I'd give them £1,000 each but, if they missed, they'd have to give me £100," Keane recalled in his autobiography following a disappointing performance from stopper Craig Gordon.

"Eight or nine players lined up, and I knew that Craig and the other goalkeepers were p**sed off with it. They didn't even look at my goalkeeping skills. They just did their stretches.

"I tipped a few on to the bar, on to the post, and I kept a clean sheet. I won £800 off the players - I could have lost eight grand.
"I was trying to generate a bit of banter, but I'd embarrassed, and maybe belittled, the goalkeepers. I hadn't meant to. But I didn't think the keeper should be beaten from 25 or 30 yards."

'I can't be f***ing signing that'

Robbie Savage was a big character on the pitch with the kind of niggle and nuisance factor Keane could appreciate.

Indeed, when Savage was coming towards the end of his career and Blackburn were looking to move him on, Keane made the call to try and sign him.
"I rang Mark Hughes. Robbie [Savage] wasn't in the Blackburn team and I asked Mark if we could try to arrange a deal," Keane recalled in his second autobiography.
"Sparky said, 'Yeah, yeah he's lost his way here but he could still do a job for you'.

"Robbie's legs were going a bit but I thought he might come up to us [at Sunderland] with his long hair and give us a lift - the way  Yorkie [Dwight Yorke] had, a big personality in the dressing room.

"Sparky gave me permission to give him a call. So I got Robbie's mobile number and rang him.
"It went to his voicemail, 'Hi it's Robbie - whazzup!' like the Budweiser ad.

"I never called him back. I thought: 'I can't be f**king signing that'."

'That, for me, is top management'

Anton Ferdinand only got to work with Roy Keane for three months following an £8million move from West Ham, but the former Man Utd legend certainly left a positive impression.

Ferdinand recalled one particular game at Blackburn when Sunderland trailed at half-time, and obviously Keane wasn't all that thrilled about it.

"There was this day at Blackburn," Ferdinand told All to Play For, "where he took Djibril Cissé to the cleaners. Oh my God!
"Djibril wasn't playing well and we went in 1-0 down, but we were playing well.
"Kenwyne Jones got beaten in the air, for their goal, by Christopher Samba. Kenwyne had the biggest leap, so Roy was fuming. He goes, 'You're meant to have the biggest leap in the Premier League and you're getting beaten to that header? It's a disgrace'.
"And he moved on to Djibril. Hammered him. Hammered him. Like, mental.
"'Yeah,' he goes. 'I can have your arrogance if you're playing well. But you're not. I can take your arrogance, but you're not playing well, so I don't want to see arrogance from you'.
"Djibril just took it. And he goes out just after half-time and scores. He runs up to him and says, 'Is that alright for you gaffer?' and he starts laughing."
It wasn't just the strikers who Keane managed to light a fire under that day, though.

"All of a sudden, Roy was like, 'Who's going to grab this game by the scruff of the neck? Who's got the b**locks to do this and do that'," Ferdinand continued. "Then he looks at me and goes, 'We all know you won't, Anton, because you ain't got any b**locks, have ya?'

"Straight-faced, he looked at me like that. I was like, 'What?!'
"I'm like, 'Okay, cool', but I was fuming inside. I went into the tunnel and I turned to the boys and went, 'Let's ****ing prove him wrong, man. Let's have it. Let's make sure we win this game so we can go back in there and give him some'.
"We went out and Kenwyne scored, just after half-time, then Djibril scored [after 70 minutes]. I blocked one off the line in the last five minutes, and we won the game.

"I was steaming in, after, to go, 'What? I got no b**locks, have I?' and Roy was there, at the door, waiting for me. He put his hand out, pulled me in and said, 'I knew we were going to f**king win anyway!' And he giggled. That, for me, is top management."

'Good answer…'

Before Jordan Henderson was captaining Liverpool to Premier League and Champions League titles, he was an academy player at Sunderland.
Henderson made his real breakthrough at the club under Steve Bruce a few months after Keane left, but he says it was the Irishman who was the first to recognise his quality - ironically after a dismal result for the reserves at Gateshead.
"He got us back straight from the game to the Academy and we were all in the lounge area," Henderson told Jamie Carragher on the Greatest Game podcast.

"He started: 'This is your f**king problem. Get together'. He pointed at me and went: 'Do you think you are good enough to play for the first team?' I was a young lad and I looked up to Roy a lot as a player and as a manager and to be fair I went, 'yeah, I do'.

"He said 'good answer' and moved on. After that game I got a phone call saying I was in the first-team squad for a pre-season game at the Stadium of Light and that was where it all started."

'He did something I didn't know was possible'

The first man to give Roy Keane a break in management was former Ireland team-mate Niall Quinn.

Quinn headed a consortium that bought Sunderland in 2006 and Keane rewarded his faith by delivering promotion within months of his appointment.

"Roy came and everything was glorious," Quinn told the Irish Times in 2019.

"He took over the team and we went on this incredible run - he did something I didn't know was possible, he didn't just bring Man United into our dressing room he brought Man United and that winning mentality to Sunderland.
"He got the people to believe, he drove people from the point of view of the standards he was demanding. The frame of mind he was in was everybody has to come to this level and it started to happen."

It is a point of view that his seconded by his captain at the club, Dean Whitehead.

"With Roy looking over us, everyone was just working to be on top of their game," he said.
"His drive and his winning mentality got injected into the team and that mentality rubbed off on every single one of us and pushed us.
"With the ability Roy had to bring out the best in the lads, it made you feel almost unbeatable at times. We were going into games expecting to win."

READ MORE: The Analyst: Who are the most inconsistent team in the Premier League?

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