Seven reasons not to make Roy angry

Locker Room:There are places in the world where you just don't want to be. Starbucks in Basra, Stringfellows in Kabul, library in Texas, Sunderland's training ground this morning. There is always a cold nip to the air in that part of the northeast of England but imagine the glacial freeze which will set in this morning when Roy Keane steps out to face the players who on Saturday afternoon brought him the most ignominious defeat of his career.

Many professional footballers forget a lot of things forever in the giddy few minutes after they open their first pay cheque and realise they aren't like ordinary people anymore.

They forget their manners and they forget the relative value and usefulness of footballers to society in general. They forget about fashion sense and they forget about hard work. They really should never forget, though, that if you know somebody like Roy Keane it is far better for Roy to let you down than for you to let Roy down. In fact that is the key to a long and happy life.

I speak as somebody who let Roy Keane down once. He divulged his phone number to me. I divulged it to somebody else, something Roy would find inexplicable even had I been detained at length in Guantanamo Bay. I, however, just coughed it up to the first person who asked me for it, and Roy Keane told me that he would like to eat my liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. At the time he was holding my warm liver in one hand and clicking his fingers to summon a stern sommelier with the other. I didn't doubt the earnestness of his intentions.

Last week Roy had a lot to say about the mentality of modern footballers. He said it in the context of England's amusing achievements in the field of snatching humiliation from the jaws of success, and yesterday the first draft of the history declared Sunderland's embarrassment had left Roy with an omelette worth of egg running down his face. Not so.

Sunderland are in the position they are in this morning - bottom three and zero momentum - because they have a quixotic insistence on tilting at windmills.

Niall Quinn and Roy Keane, whatever they may have thought of each other during the Saipan soap opera - have more in common than either probably realises. They both drank at international level during their playing careers, and Keane certainly had a catalogue of moments he wouldn't be happy seeing replicated by any of his own players, but both of them had a competitiveness and a sense of duty on the pitch which meant neither ever came off so much as a practice field without having sweated his guts out.

That shared belief in values has informed Sunderland's rise, and unfortunately it underpins their current stasis as well. Roy Keane spent the guts of £35 million on keeping Sunderland up, considerably more than the other clubs in the basement area of the Premiership, but the club's (quite correct and indeed heroic) approach to having a wage structure and not being held hostage by agents has meant that often the only players available were ones who would otherwise have been playing Championship football.

Sunderland realised a long time ago through bitter, close-hand experience that the traditional boom-or-bust approach to life in the bottom two-thirds of the table is unsustainable. When the last round of crazy TV money came into the clubs, Sunderland argued at chairmanship level with the other Premiership clubs for the imposition of some sort of rational approach to wages in the league, a loose salary-cap arrangement.

In private there were many heads nodding in agreement but when the crunch came clubs opted for the short-term solution of signing a few big names hawked by fat agents and putting a massive wage cheque into their hands every week. This has a ratchet effect on wages at the club.

Weak chairmen and weak managers often sign deals guaranteeing a particular player he will always be the best player in the club or will always be among the top three wage earners. Agents often engineer situations whereby if their absurdly well paid player doesn't leave when said agent engineers a few transfer rumours the player will be rewarded with a nice, fresh contract and a loyalty bonus.

The signing of one star player has a knock-on effect right through the wage structure of a club and usually through the wage structure of rival clubs.

It is important therefore that Sunderland succeed in staying up this season, that they became a model for fiscal common sense from which other clubs could draw some inspiration and the courage to say no to Simon Spiv next time he calls on his mobile looking to do business.

Roy Keane was gracious and humble on Saturday in the wake of the Everton debacle. He had a lot to be gracious and humble about but when he spoke about having good players and good characters his loyalty wasn't merely a motivational device.

The players Sunderland have brought into the Premiership with them are the ones willing to take a risk at an unfashionable club with a young manager who carried with him a reputation for fearsomeness.

Keane often speaks about the difficulty of attracting players to the northeast of England. This is really a code for the difficulty of attracting modern footballers to a club who pay less than 20k a week to a player. Keane need only look down the road at Newcastle or Middlesbrough to see there are many players and their "wags" who will live in the northeast if the money is absurd and the demands on them are moderate. Even our own Damien Duff was content to move from Roman Abramovich's opulent Chelsea to the old money at Newcastle.

Keane spent £35 million, a good chunk of it on a goalie, Craig Gordon, who has been worth a few points to his side already this season but whose confidence must this morning be in the same left-luggage department as Paul Robinson's and Scott Carson's.

The striker Kenwyne Jones has been a surprising success but, after a good start, Michael Chopra has drifted off the pace.

Keane is still waiting for Anthony Stokes to become the player the advance billing promised he would be.

Curiously for a man who was one of the greatest midfielders of our time, Keane has been reluctant to invest much money in that area of the field. It may pain him too much to pay good money for mediocre talent in his own speciality.

As for the defence, notably porous on Saturday, it contained Ian Harte and Paul McShane. Harte and McShane have much in common. Harte now has a great future behind him and it's often forgotten that in the early days of Mick McCarthy's stewardship when Harte had to be slotted on occasion into the centre-half position he looked as if he could be a great defender in years to come. But the rap sheet filled up with critical errors.

McShane has beguiling enthusiasm and a playing style that suits his flame-red hair, and the more enthusiastic cheerleaders were comparing him early on to Kevin Moran.

Again though the critical errors are piling up. Two of Everton's goals on Saturday were attributed to McShane's mistakes.

It's time to wonder if McShane hasn't been given too much exposure and expectation too young. And to wonder if he, like Harte before him, would not have been better off down a division or two for another couple of years learning his trade.

Sunderland are an attractive experiment. Keane hasn't been able to buy readymade Premiership players. He is not a readymade Premiership manager. The learning takes place on the job, and if Keane thought life at the top was tough when he was at Manchester United he knows this Monday morning that life at the bottom is far more urgent and frightening.

Seven-one.

And this morning he looks into the eyes of the players that for whatever reason did not go for bigger money and crazier money anywhere else. It's them versus the rest; their values and their ambitions against a world of money and myopia.

Seven-one.

A lot of people would have laughed at Sunderland on Saturday when they heard that. But we wish them luck. Sunderland need to succeed.