Keane confirmed at Sunderland

Last updated : 28 August 2006 By Tony Scholes
Roy Keane during his time at Celtic last season
The chase for a new manager on Wearside has been a long one, with names way out of reach of the North East club being mentioned. They wanted Martin O'Neill, he went to Villa, they courted Sam Allardyce and no one could see him making the move for Bolton.

Alan Curbishley was another who they approached but he preferred to continue his break from the game. The name of Roy Keane got the occasional mention but no one quite took this one seriously given his very public fall out with current manager and Chairman Niall Quinn after the 2002 World Cup fiasco, and the comments he made about Sunderland being a small club run by a coward.

Quinn seemed to rule out Keane after their Carling Cup exit at Bury last Tuesday when he suggested they were talking to a world class manager, but it turned out that the talks were with a world class footballer who finally hung up his boots at the end of last season and was looking for his first managerial job.

I first saw Keane in a League Cup tie against the Clarets sixteen years ago, in a game that was dominated by a horror challenge by Stuart Pearce on David Hamilton. The teenager looked then to be a top player in the making and that's exactly how it turned out.

He became popular with the Burnley fans following his very public snub of Blackburn Rovers in 1993 when they thought they had done what they did best in the Walker era, outbid everyone else for his services. He instead joined Manchester United where he had a brilliant career until leaving last season for a short stay at Celtic.

He now takes over a Sunderland club that is not currently in the best of health. They were relegated last season from the Premiership with just fifteen points, beating that league's worst by four points previously set by themselves three years earlier.

Relegation has not changed anything and they go into this afternoon's game against West Brom without a point in four league games and that Carling Cup exit. He'll need to be as good a manager as he was a player to turn the current situation around at Sunderland but there's money available. Apart from his £2 million per year salary he's got around £15 million to spend in the transfer market.

His first game in charge will be a week next Saturday when they travel to Pride Park to take on Derby County, a side who will be looking for their first home win of the season.