Enigmatic Roy Keane not quite the open book

A read of his book gives a definite sense of the person but Roy Keane says "you always hold something back" in these situations and watching him for the best part of an hour at yesterday's press launch may just give a hint of what he might be hiding from the public view.

Keane has his fair share of contradictions. At his most reflective he seems vulnerable and full of self doubt; traits, he says, he simply couldn't afford to show when powering Manchester United to a succession of titles over a decade ago. On other occasions, the man who buried the hatchet with both Niall Quinn and John Delaney while observing, essentially, that "life's too short", sounds like a still bitter man who might well hope there is an afterlife just so that he can pursue his feud with Alex Ferguson for all eternity.

Disservice

It’s hard to shake the feeling that he talks about Ferguson a little too readily, though it actually does the book a disservice. Later he talks about the happier endings to most of the stories, describing his motivation for

The Second Half

as a need to “come out fighting,” in reaction all of the “lies and lies and lies,” that have been told about him by those who – mostly at the behest of Ferguson he seems to believe – have sought to do him down.

When he speaks about himself he comes across as more human and, inevitably, engaging. He adds a little to the insights in the book regarding his bouts of uncertainty and introspection, at least until he is asked a question that appears to cross an unseen line.

By the time, for instance, someone enquires if it has been hard work “being Roy Keane,” and whether he likes himself now, he has given some grounds for believing he might be open to exploring the subject. Instead, after the briefest of pauses, he breaks into a smile, observes: “that’s a bit heavy,” then limits his reply to: “I’m contented and comfortable with who I am, yeah.”

Contemptuous

There are suggestions at times that “who he is” may not have changed all that much at all. He clearly retains much of the combativeness that contributed such a great deal to his game. He is withering about (“weak” and “average”) Alf-Inge Haaland, repeatedly contemptuous of his former manager at United and entirely willing to give the British media a handy headline about José Mourinho whose attempt to shake his hand recently while the game between Chelsea and Aston Villa was still going on, he emphatically describes as “disgraceful”.

Ferguson’s influence over him is to be played down these days, with Keane suggesting it was the great players at United who did most to shape his development. Some very British characters are name checked but when his drinking is mentioned it is, pointedly, the foreign players who get the credit for prompting a change in his ways.

Still, he regrets nothing, he insists and says with some relish that if someone had told him at 19 as he came off the pitch at Cobh Ramblers that he should, “go home to eat some carbohydrates to refuel for next week”, his reaction would simply have been: ‘You need locking up, I’m going out.”

It is Ferguson he returns to time and again, though, and surely not just because he is asked about him. It’s a two way street, of course, and when he’s reminded that the 72-year-old said in his own book not so long ago, that Keane’s tongue was the hardest part of his body,” he grins again.

“Well . . . what do you think? I kick pretty hard. I think it was a cheap dig. He was never critical when we were winning trophies and he was getting his new contracts, getting things named after him (and becoming) Sir this.”

“He was not pulling me or other players, saying ‘listen, you need to relax a bit’. That was the game and I appreciate the game. The game finished but it was all the carry on afterwards.”

More than once he touches on this, the idea that he has come to terms with the manner of his departure from Manchester United and the ruthless way Ferguson shunted him towards the door after so many years together; accepting it as just business, in a way he appeared incapable of doing at the time. What he cannot forgive, he adds, are some of the things that have been said since.

One of the two men, though, could surely do with calling a halt because while it may all help to sell books (and, hey, while they persist, hopefully newspapers) the tone of it often seems to demean the pair of them.

Ambition

Inevitably, he is far more positive about Martin O’Neill. Whether it is a club or his country, Keane’s ambition is clearly to manage a team again and he insists that whenever he might get the chance, he will do it better than before as a result of the time he has spent working alongside the former Northern Ireland international.

“Definitely,” he says. “From a selfish point of view, I’m in a great situation, working with Martin and Ireland. And the players; I’m enjoying working with the players and obviously if I go back into it – and that’s one of the reasons I took the job – going back to it, hopefully I’ll be a better coach and better to deal with. I think those few things that I’ve learnt already; hopefully I can bring to Villa.

“I know my boundaries. I’m still not making the big decisions; I’m not having the final say on the team. I’m giving my opinion which hopefully the manager of Villa and Ireland are taking on board but you still ultimately miss that: ‘It’s my call’.”

It will be again soon enough, you suspect. And that will be interesting too because with Keane, one way or the other, it is rarely any other way.