Too keen to criticise

ROY KEANE has been accused in some quarters of cowardice for walking out on Sunderland.

It isn’t, you would guess, a point of view that the prosecutors of the Irishman would be keen to make face-to-face.

Nor does it carry much weight. You can lay a lot of things at the door of the former Manchester United star, but being weak of constitution is stretching it a bit.

This is a bloke who served under not one but two fearsome managerial geniuses in Brian Clough and Sir Alex Ferguson and who effectively quit the 2002 World Cup — the pinnacle of any player’s career — because the high standards he was used to weren’t being followed.

So why did he walk away from Sunderland? In my view, he was tired and fed up. Tired of the defeats — it was six out of seven by the time he departed — but also fed up of the bad attitudes of some of his players and the fearsome, unjustified stick he was getting from a story-hungry media who did much to manufacture a sense of crisis.

In that sequence of six losses, five were by just a single goal. In that time, Sunderland struck the woodwork seven times. The Black Cats weren’t, and aren’t, a bad side, but one that happens to be unlucky in this particular section of a long season.

Many point to the near £80million Keane spent at Sunderland, ridiculing his expensive flops while ignoring the fact that other managers get it just as wrong without such scrutiny.

The acquisition of Kenwyne Jones was laughed at when Keane handed Southampton £6million for the striker, yet he has gone on to prove himself as one of the most effective target men in the Premier League.

Kieran Richardson, at £5.5m, has revived his career since moving and is now being tipped for an England recall.

Troublesome pair El-Hadji Diouf and Pascal Chimbonda have barely flickered at the Stadium of Light. But with their disciplinary problems of the past, maybe it is the case that Keane gave them too much credit, believing they could rise above everything to prove their worth.

There are other flops. But was it Keane’s fault that somebody else signed the cheques that brought Michael Chopra (£5m) and Craig Gordon (£9m) to the club as he attempted to quickly build a squad in his first Premier League season that wouldn’t bomb as disastrously as nemesis Mick McCarthy’s did, twice? Hardly.

You can accuse Keane of plenty, but the first rule of management is, if the money is available to spend on transfers, you had better get it spent while you can.

Roy Keane is a complex man who sought simple solutions: hard work, total commitment and a desire to be the best. Sadly, his players failed to live up those standards.

Perhaps the bar was set too high. It is also true, though, that Keane himself suffered from being held to a standard it was impossible to achieve at a middling club like Sunderland.

The only place Keane ever seemed content was Manchester United. Maybe the level of professionalism formed in him at Old Trafford was too big to carry around.