Trigger happy in the red and white of the Stadium of Light

"Every club I've been at the manager's left: Bruce Rioch left for Arsenal, Roy (Evans) spewed it and Brian Kidd got the sack." Jason McAteer tells Michael Walker about life at Sunderland under Peter Reid.

When Roy Keane speaks, it is no surprise that his team-mates listen. What is a surprise is that, when Keane holds press conferences for the Republic of Ireland, one of those team-mates regularly turns up to look and learn. Most surprising of all, given his clownish reputation, is that the man at the back of the room is Jason McAteer.

McAteer's nickname is Trigger, culled from the character in Only Fools and Horses, and he once shouted: "One hundred and eighty!" at Jimmy White in a Dublin nightclub; so he has, as they say, previous.

But he revealed a rather different persona sitting in Sunderland's training ground yesterday morning.

McAteer called Keane "complex" at one point, and without wishing to make him sound more like Bamber Gascoigne than Paul, it may be time to allow McAteer room to express a second dimension to his personality. He is 30 now, and has been part of English football for a decade.

Having also watched him drench Niall Quinn with a trayful of water during a television interview on Thursday, and then strip to his underpants when interrupting a Thomas Sorensen photograph, you have to be cautious with this reassessment, but McAteer was serious yesterday.

Then again, there has not been much to laugh about at Sunderland this week. Today McAteer comes face to face with his Irish captain at Old Trafford, and when he said, "I find the situation quite funny", McAteer was referring not to Sunderland's plight but to Roy Keane and the power of celebrity.

"I've got a lot of respect for Roy, although he's a miserable bastard - and you can write that," McAteer said. "He is a complex character, I see him personally and professionally and he's not too dissimilar. I can't work him out, but I really enjoy watching his press conferences."

McAteer values most things Irish. When he was made unwelcome at Blackburn Rovers after Graeme Souness's arrival, it was games for the Republic that kept him going.

"Ireland was my saving grace," he said. "Being in the squad with Mick McCarthy was brilliant. I was at a point in football where I could have kept going down. Graeme Souness rang me one night and said that Preston had come in for me: no disrespect to Preston, but that would have been the wrong move for me."

He had already made one of those when he joined Blackburn from Liverpool three Januarys ago. A persistent nerve injury in his leg meant McAteer's contributions for Brian Kidd were curtailed, and when he did get fit, McAteer found Souness's cold shoulder every bit as painful.

"Leaving Liverpool hurt me," he said . "That changed my outlook on football. I would have played for nothing, I really would, because Liverpool was the ultimate for me. It was the dream and I was like a kid who thinks it's never going to end.

"I became bitter, cynical about the game - cynical about the French (laughs). I lost my way a bit. I became very cynical about the game, and then I met Graeme Souness and thought: 'Well, I'm right.'

"This is the move I should have made when I left Liverpool. Brian Kidd was brilliant and Blackburn should have stuck with him, but this was the club I should have come to. Peter Reid gave me a lifeline."

McAteer and Reid share more than Scouse origins since his transfer to Wearside last October. On Tuesday night, as Sunderland succumbed to their fourth home defeat of the season, to Middlesbrough, McAteer, having been substituted, experienced the fury of disaffected fans as they besieged the Sunderland dug-out.

"You can understand them," he said. "I come from a place myself where football is the be-all and end-all. Football in this community is probably the biggest thing, similar to Liverpool.

'I can understand that. But on the other hand, six years ago Peter Reid had a club on his hands that needed a lot doing to it. He's taken the club to the top of English soccer: we're playing in the Premier League in a 48,000 all-seater stadium, and attracting big enough players to do well.

"I mean, I don't think we'll ever attract the Van Nistelrooys of this world. So Peter Reid has more things to deal with than Alex Ferguson, Peter Reid can't go out and buy whoever he wants to solve a problem. Alex Ferguson's just bought a world-class Uruguayan,Peter Reid can't do that - and how long have we been looking for a striker?

"But Peter Reid is good at his job, he's proved that, he's put Sunderland where they are and he is the man to lead the club to better results. The club is going the right way: this is the only football club I've been at where you have everything from a psychologist to a biologist.

"Not that I've a great track record with managers - every club I've been at the manager's left: Bruce Rioch left for Arsenal, Roy (Evans) spewed it and Brian Kidd got the sack."

Yet concrete evidence of Reid's and Sunderland's hopeful future came the morning after the Middlesbrough defeat, when Sven-Goran Eriksson unveiled a plaque at the club's new academy and training ground. Supporters, however, are also focused on Sunderland's downward direction in the table. At the Stadium of Light matters are particularly twitchy and McAteer agreed that Sunderland fans may well be the most anxious in the land.

"At Liverpool I remember it being a tough time when we were going for the title, but there are 12,000 more of them here. It can be difficult, I've done a million interviews where I've said you can't hear it, but you can. You can sense it and it does filter through to the players, easy passes start to look hard.

"And the lads are down; it's a good sign, a sign that they care. But you've got to pick yourself up, go again."

As resident clown, McAteer has a smiling role. "If I can bring a bit of laughter to the lads then I'll do it." And relegation has not even been mentioned.

"No, because it won't happen. We'll be all right: if you've got Kevin Philips up front you've got a chance. We play better against the big teams, you could see us beating United. It's not unlikely - ish."

Roy Keane will have something to say to McAteer if Sunderland do.