Keane wears his soul on his sleeve

A year on The Wear:Week by week, month by month, Wearside is gradually coming to terms with Roy Keane - who he is, what he is, the believer, the sceptic, the fierce manager, the convivial football man.

Yesterday there was a taste of several sides as Keane looked forward to leading Sunderland to Arsenal's new Ashburton Grove stadium for the first time.

Keane talks to the media not long after breakfast but it does not take him long to get into the day.

So while others were gulping down cups of tea to get them going, he was already onto major subjects, not least the very soul of the game.

Keane is not uniquely qualified to discuss the subject, and it was Arsene Wenger who raised the issue first during the week, but Keane has danced enough on the wrong side and crucially, even at 36, has seen enough of the contrasting eras, to understand it. He does not like much of what he sees.

Employing the tunnel at Highbury as an image - where as Manchester United captain he once famously faced down his Arsenal opposite Patrick Vieira - Keane reminisced about a time not long gone when "real intensity" was on view.

"It's colder now," he said. There was a worry about the tunnel architecture of Arsenal's new ground, yet that did not prevent him smiling at the memory of sometimes explosive Arsenal-United encounters.

"Arsenal was always the game for me," he said. "We've spoken before about the Liverpools, the Leedses and the Manchester Cities, but for me it was always about Arsenal. I've not come up against Arsene yet, but I've always had massive respect for him as a manager. They were fantastic, those games, the best.

"United against Arsenal - if you could go back for one game, that would be the game. It was a brilliant rivalry, between the fans, the players and the managers.

"Obviously we were usually fighting out for the title, fantastic. You would give anything to be playing in one of those games again.

"If I was playing Arsenal on the Saturday, my preparation for the game would start on the previous Sunday. Your body knew you were going to be playing Arsenal and, psychologically, you would start to get ready for it. It was the same for all the players."

He did everything but lick his lips at the end of that.

One suspects Keane was then diplomatic but he said he did not know why characters like himself and Vieira are not around. He touched on "foreigners" but then complimented them on what they had brought to England. Arsenal, after all, are un-English. But . . .

"The game is changing. The day I left the club I had been involved with for a long, long time, it was a different club from the one I joined. It was different from the club I had signed for. That's why I don't really miss the playing side of it.

"A lot of it is down to the players; they're different characters now. I'm not being critical of foreign players but a lot of people in football will tell you things are different. There are different characters now; players' behaviour is different. I know people will say that's something coming from me, but every time they're touched they seem to go down.

"You saw an incident this week up at Celtic and people are thinking: 'Come on, what on earth are you about?' Football is a tough, physical game, but you see players rolling around and players trying to get other players booked. Managers and coaches are even trying to get other players booked, and that's why the game is losing its soul. That's a great way of putting it, I have to say."

From AC Milan's Dida, to exorbitant wages for average players, to foreign owners, ticket prices and altered kick-off times, Keane went on. There was more, most important being the decreasing competition in the Premier League.

Of course a man who has made millions from the game has to be aware, but the price dominating yesterday was the 22 to 1 on offer against Sunderland beating Arsenal. A sensitive manager would be mightily insulted by that, but Keane was concerned more about what the odds say about the league in general.

"It's sad isn't it?" Keane asked of the top-four monopoly. "The big three or four will get bigger and they'll only go away from the other teams. That's the vicious circle that we're in. They will continue to get into Europe and that will give them big money.

"That's where the game has lost its soul. I don't think the strength in depth in the Premier League is as good as it was four or five years ago. It's a tough league, but I still think it was more competitive three or four years ago.

"If you were a betting man, you'd put a fortune on the top-four teams being the teams we know they're going to be.

"The order is open to an argument, but the make-up of the teams isn't. It's sad."

Indeed it is. For the first time in more than a decade Keane is seeing English football from the perspective of looking up. It can give you a pain in the neck. But what he said also raised a question about what Sunderland have done and will plan to do from here.

Keane did not go into that. Despite the seriousness of much of what he was saying, his tone was that of a jolly cynic.

The Drumaville Consortium had been over on Thursday to have a kickabout at the Stadium of Light for which they donated money to charity. Keane had been their manager.

"I just watched and laughed. The money has gone to the Sunderland Foundation. It was a nice gesture and it's the other side of the game that people might not see.

"That's why you want to stay involved and why you don't let football losing its soul take over your life. You want to make a difference."