Now that Roy Keane is strong favourite to get the vacant manager's job, we weigh up the pros and cons of a potential return to the Stadium Of Light...
PRO
It’s Roy Keane. We have tried a young and promising manager in Jack Ross, we have tried someone who ‘knows the league’ in Parky and we have tried someone with a ‘philosophy’ in Lee Johnson. Now what we need is a big personality who knows the club and has incredibly high standards. We need someone who knows the club and can look at our predicament for what it is – an absolute disgrace. We shouldn’t be in League One and Keane would not accept another season here, plain and simple. Attracting a manager and personality like Keane is possibly the biggest statement of our intent we could make to the clubs around us and to our fans.
CON
There area arguably more pragmatic options available. Grant McCann for example, whilst not being a marquee appointment, would make more sense. He won League One last year with arguably a worse squad than we have currently. Achieving promotion so recently and being available without compensation, despite the lack of glamour, appointing the former Hull manager would be a rational approach to which isn’t muddied by nostalgia. He knows what it takes to achieve promotion – which is indisputably our goal and we would probably go up with the Northern Irishman at the helm.
PRO
None of the other candidates are Roy Keane. Getting someone like McCann or Warnock in just won’t be the same lift for the team and the supporters. After reading the list of other candidates, none of the others really fit the bill as much as Keane does. It just feels right. Obviously they say don’t go back – but the Defoe signing already feels like a massive step forward in the right direction and getting Keane in would really propel this squad forward. Keane really seems like the right man at the right time and the experience that both Keane and Defoe could provide in the dressing room would be unrivalled in this division. We have been crying out for experience, discipline and steel and Keane very much fills that criteria. He has achieved promotion with us before and falls into a completely different category of manager to what we’ve had recently. You could be forgiven for thinking we are not one of the biggest clubs in England with recent appointments: Parkinson, Grayson, Johnson - the list goes on. We’ve accepted mediocrity for years now and finally we are being linked with a manager who will raise standards and expectations again and hopefully, if appointed, get us out of this miserable league.
CON
Keane hasn’t been a manager for 11 years. On paper, he is desperately short of recent experience. Also for all that he had success in his first spell, people forget the way that he left, resigning following a disagreement with our former owner, Ellis Short. How would Keane adapt to life in League One, with a director of football above him and a 25 year old owner? It certainly isn’t the same Sunderland he left and despite the optimism generated by the mention of Keane as the new manager, something in the back of my mind says that it could all end disastrously. His last job as manager was at Ipswich and he claims in his autobiography he got it really wrong in terms of man management. This has been corroborated by former Ipswich players. How successfully Keane would manage our League One players remains to be seen.
CONCLUSION
Despite Keane’s lack of recent managerial experience, no doubt his work on Sky Sports and his role’s at Aston Villa and the Republic of Ireland respectively mean that he obviously understands the modern game. People across the country watch him on TV and think he is a one dimensional Mr Angry figure, a contrarian pundit who, if given a managerial job, would simply run around and headbutt people. But we know differently. For the time that he was in charge, we played exciting football and there was a really good feeling around the club. We had a knack for scoring late on, which if he could replicate again, would stand us in good stead considering how bad we are in the second half for the most part. Players were desperate to score out of fear – fear for a bollocking from the man in the dressing room who demands only the best. Most of all, Keane’s appointment would give us a much needed lift. Replacing Johnson with Keane is like going back to eating full meals after subsisting on a diet of thin gruel for years. We are used to the gruel, its mediocre flavour. We have adapted to it, but at the same time it barely sustains us. Thousands have walked away from the gruel. Getting Defoe back and now Keane (potentially) reminds us that we used to eat well, so to speak. In the interest of playing devil’s advocate, I have attempted to give both sides of a deal, which if it happens, would be an obvious lift for the club. Now that Keane is rumoured anything less than Keane is a return to gruel, for me. Sod ‘sensible’ League One appointments, Roy Keane just feel right. As he said ‘he was born to manage Sunderland’.
