And suddenly, it’s not so much of a son of Clough, son of Fergie kind of tale. That never worked for me anyway. As if playing for them was like touching saints’ relics and the ancient DNA rubbing off onto your fingers.
When you have to shave, it can be hard not to interpret not shaving as a distress signal. Early December’s combo of Keane musing on resignation and his great black shovel of a beard added up for me and yesterday was the logical conclusion.
I still think I was wrong about him though. I thought Sunderland was the wrong job for him. I had in mind the Martin O’Neill management scrapbook with its cuttings from Grantham and Wycombe and Birmingham: clubs desparate enough to let an intelligent man who’d learned his trade do what he wanted. Sunderland didn’t seem to need Keane enough, and he hadn’t paid his management dues.
But he got them up and kept them up and leaves them with a squad with a mix of ages and talent. Some are complaining that the talent is too chippy by half, but no one’s managed to get eleven Charltons in their team and even Arsene Wenger has his troublemakers it seems.
Something happened. It looks like it happened in the last six weeks or so. We’re going to have to wait on a book to find out what, I suspect. In the meantime, here’s the Sunderland school song. Getting out of date:
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8WFHsSEDiZg]
You have to love blogworld. My colleague from the Philippines, a huge Sunderland fan was devastated when I told him this story. He had had some texts from his Sunderland buddies, but had ignored them. Now he will be following up. Go for it news breaker.
Oh, he’ll like the accompanying vid, won’t he?
I caught the news from the flatscreens in Deacon Brodie’s over the shoulders of x00 suits last night, Keane looking more and more like a survivor of the Franklin expedition.
I’m interested in the comparison with Ince, who was not quite the same kind of player, but did serve some apprenticeship down the divisions.
Of course, it’s worth noting in passing that some suggest Keane didn’t expect instant promotion with Sunderland… an extra year in the Championship to hone his skill (and build a scouting network?) might have been on his mind.
I think Ince certainly has come into a difficult situation. The loss of Bentley, the discontent of Santa Cruz…
Anyway, there’s so much hidden in this story (resignation by text message?) it’s hard to know what to say.
I think the transfer window was part of it. If the new Chief Executive wants to change the destiny of the team, he’d be interfering in the buys in January. I can see Keane not liking that.
The other thing, as Amy Laurence suggested on the GU podcast is that we only found out how bad the Spurs camp atmosphere had got when Ramos left. Maybe relations with players fell off the cliff?