SIDELINE CUT: The sundering of the Ferguson/Keane alliance in 2005 was a shame for both men involved and, perhaps most of all, for Manchester United

PRIDE AND loyalty provoked Alex Ferguson into his sharp rebuke of Roy Keane’s criticism following Manchester United’s collapse in the Champion’s League. As ever, the Scot chose his response to Keane’s criticism of United’s younger players with words that were careful and typically acerbic. His description of Keane as a “TV critic” was as premeditated and ruthlessly executed as any of the tackles the Irishman made in his years charging around in a United shirt and doing his best to embody Ferguson’s spirit and fury on the field of play.

But when you strip away all the sensationalism of the ‘spat’ between a former manager and player, what you are left with is two lifelong Old Trafford men who have always reacted true to their nature in times of disappointment.

“Pounding over every blade of grass, competing as if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him,” was Ferguson’s summary in his autobiography of Keane’s by now legendary performance in the Stadio Delle Alpi in the Champions’ League semi-final against Juventus. That match was probably at the core of United’s godly completion of League, FA and European silverware in 1999.

“I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a player,” Ferguson wrote, which is just about the ultimate accolade that any player could hope to receive.

That was then, this is now. Just six years after that triumphant year, Keane was gone from Old Trafford after a spectacular bust-up with the man who had plucked him from Nottingham Forest as a youngster and distributed a perfect balance of patriarchal advice and freedom to make mistakes until Keane matured to become the most influential footballer in the history of the Premier League. The departure was inevitable once Keane cut loose with his criticisms: an individual as sharp as Keane knew damn well that to take Ferguson on in a head-to-head difference of opinion was to fast-track your exit from the club.

Even as Ferguson responded to the comments Keane made as part of his role as an ITV panellist during the week, his mind must have flashed back to that damning interview the Irishman gave to United’s in-house television channel, lambasting half the United team who had been playing during a 4-1 defeat to Middlesbrough.

It was no coincidence that Keane was recuperating from injury at the time and that his influence was peripheral.

And it wasn’t difficult to see that he was by then becoming disillusioned by what he had believed to be a debilitating softness at the core of too many young footballers governed by the belief that they had made it simply by signing the contract that instantly carried them to a remote stratosphere of wealth.

It was a theme on which he often elaborated during his entertaining weekly press conferences while he managed at Sunderland and Ipswich and there has never been a shrewder observer of the banality of the footballer’s life.

Ferguson’s retort about Keane’s record as a manager – “Roy had an opportunity as a manager and it is a hard job” – was measured but it said plenty. The Fleet Street men were quick to brand Keane a failed manager, which is premature at best. If his time at Ipswich was disastrous, then his first season at Sunderland was sensational. The stock accusation that he showed naivety on the transfer market has often been made but in the hyper-inflated world of English football, it is highly debatable as to how many truly good players are out there, let alone how many of those fancy moving to “Tractor Boys” country.

At 40, Keane still has sufficient time to jumpstart his career. Still, his decision to wander back into the spotlight by sitting on the pundits’ couch that he once held in disdain leaves him open to criticism and mockery.

On the face of it, Keane is ideal for the task of telling it like it is on the big nights of football. He has proven himself congenitally incapable of not answering questions honestly, not least during interviews he gave to this newspaper. In an age when the ability to not make a hash of delivering bland statements while looking halfway presentable in non-iron shirts is all it takes, Keane could be a tonic. He is articulate and has a wicked edge to his wit.

But every time you see him standing in front of the camera, you wonder what in the hell the man is doing there. He can’t really disguise the fact that he thinks that everything outside the actual game – the lights, the cameras, and the talking heads including himself – is all, as he might say himself, a bit silly.

Impatience and restlessness may have made it impossible for Keane to see his days out at Old Trafford. But when you look at both Keane and Ferguson this week, it is difficult not to think how valuable it could have been to both men had they managed to persevere with what was, for the most part, one of the great double acts in English football.

How instructive it could have been for younger United players like Ravel Morrison and Tom Cleverly – who must already feel as if the very structure of Old Trafford will fall apart unless he starts to shine soon – to have Keane as a mentor and a voice of conscience.

And what difference a half-time Keane lecture – delivered at Ferguson’s behest – might have made to the team that was defeated in Basel last Wednesday night.

One of the reasons why Ferguson reacted so tetchily to Keane’s remarks is that he knows it was the Cork man’s spark – the fire in the belly – that was so badly lacking against Basel in midweek.

And how much could Keane have learned from just ghosting alongside Ferguson for a season or two and watching how one of the great managers in any professional sport goes about his business. The patience, the attention to detail, the craftiness, the energy and most of all, genius for cobbling together 11 young men who belong to a different generation to Ferguson and who follow a different value system than his but who nonetheless go out and play for him and in his vision, winter after winter.

Keane could have learned all that. When Keane was lured into managing Sunderland by Niall Quinn, his seemingly effortless guidance of the club from the bottom of the Championship table to promotion led to instant acclamation and heady talk of a return, some day, to Old Trafford where he would sit in the office once owned by his old boss.

That looks like a remote possibility just now but identifying the men who will follow in Ferguson’s shoes remains a vague business. Martin O’Neill has gone from being a hyperactive young manager to a man on his second cycle in the Premier League waiting to become the next United manager.

Whatever about United’s ability to offer the game’s most valuable players the absurd contracts that they can command, identifying someone with sufficient substance and fearlessness and ambition to replace Ferguson may prove to a trick beyond the club.

That Keane possesses all three of those qualities is indisputable. The pity is that Manchester United as well as Keane and Ferguson did not have the foresight to recognise that potential back in 2005, when they squabbled over a television interview and walked away, heads held high.