Keane uses new book to settle old scores

It's not entirely clear what motivates Roy Keane to put out these books, but if it's the money, he certainly seems to give those writing the cheques their money's worth.

It could be that somewhere, back in the early days somebody hit the Corkman with the old line: "Don't get mad, get even." If so, the former Manchester United star may well have asked if it was really an either/or situation.

The Second Half, in any case, appears to pick up where his first book left off, with Keane recounting how he got mad at someone, and then proceeding to get even. There's even a bit of unfinished business from volume one, with the now Republic of Ireland assistant manager referring to the furore which accompanied his revelation that there was premeditation involved in his terrible challenge on Alf-Inge Haaland. He observes now that "there are things I regret in my life and he's not one of them. He was an absolute prick to play against."

Leaving United

Clearly he does have some second thoughts in relation to his departure from Manchester United, although chief among them seems to be his expression of regret over the row that prompted his exit. Keane recalls reacting badly to Alex Ferguson’s assistant questioning his loyalty to the club after he had given an interview to MUTV in which he had criticised some of the younger players:

“He was just on my right shoulder. How I didn’t f**king hit him – I was thinking, ‘The villa in Portugal, not treating me well in training’ – and he just used the word ‘loyalty’ to me.

“I said, ‘Don’t you f**king talk to me about loyalty, Carlos. You left this club after 12 months a few years ago for the Real Madrid job. Don’t you dare question my loyalty. I had opportunities to go to Juventus and Bayern Munich.”

When Ferguson attempted to intervene, he said: “You as well, gaffer. We need f**king more from you. We need a bit more, gaffer. We’re slipping behind other teams.”

Later he recalls: “I went to see the manager and Carlos and I apologised. But now I kind of wish I hadn’t. I apologised but afterwards I was thinking ‘I’m not sure why I f**king apologised’. I just wanted to do the right thing. I was apologising for what had happened – that it had happened. But I wasn’t apologising for my behaviour or stance. There’s a difference. I had nothing to apologise for.”

Subsequently he writes: “I said to Ferguson, ‘Can I play for somebody else?’ And he said, ‘Yeah you can, cos we’re tearing up your contract’. So I thought: ‘All right – I’ll get fixed up.’

“I knew there’d be clubs in for me when the news got out. I said, ‘Yeah, I think we have come to the end.’ I just thought, ‘f**king prick’ – and I stood up and went ‘Yeah. I’m off.’”

Of the hugely controversial takeover of Manchester United by the Glazers, he now writes: “I had a few shares in the club as part of my contract. So the Glazers coming in was worth a few bob to me.”

On Schmeichel

Referring to his late-night fist fight with

Peter Schmeichel

, Keane writes: “I had a bust-up with Peter when we were on a pre-season tour of Asia, in 1998, just after I came back from my cruciate injury. I think we were in Hong Kong. There was drink involved.

“There’d been a little bit of tension between us over the years, for football reasons. Peter would come out shouting at players, and I felt sometimes he was playing up to the crowd: ‘Look at me!’

“He was probably doing it for concentration levels, but I felt he did it too often, as if he was telling the crowd: ‘Look what I have to deal with.’

“He said: ‘I’ve had enough of you. It’s time we sorted this out.’ So I said, ‘Okay’, and we had a fight. It felt like 10 minutes. There was a lot of noise – Peter’s a big lad.

“I woke up the next morning. I kind of vaguely remembered the fight. My hand was really sore and one of my fingers was bent backwards.

“The manager had a go at us as we were getting on the bus, and people were going on about a fight in the hotel the night before. It started coming back to me – the fight between me and Peter.

“He told us that we were a disgrace to the club, and that we’d woken Bobby Charlton up, that Bobby had come out of his room and seen us.

“Peter took responsibility for the fight, which was good. I admired him for it. But Sir Bobby could have tried to break it up.

“In the meantime, Nicky Butt had been filling me in on what had happened the night before. Butty had refereed the fight. Anyway, Peter had grabbed me, I’d head-butted him – we’d been fighting for ages.

“At the press conference, Peter took his sunglasses off. He had a black eye. The questions came at him: ‘Peter, what happened to your eye?’”

On Ferdinand

Keane also writes about another United teammate, Rio Ferdinand, incurring a ban for missing a drug test: “He [Rio] suffered for it and so did the team. If it had been me, and the doctor had said I had to do a drugs test, I’d have gone and done it. It wasn’t something I’d have forgotten.

“It wouldn’t have been like collecting a letter at the office, or remembering your boots. When a doctor says you’ve got to do a drugs test, it’s not an everyday thing. But then, some people are genuinely forgetful.

“I don’t think I was annoyed at the time, and I don’t think the other players were either. But, ultimately, the team suffered. I didn’t look at Rio and think that he’d been up to no good, or that there was a hidden reason for what had occurred.

“I think he genuinely forgot. We paid the price. He was a very good player and we missed him, especially in the second half of the season when the crunch games were coming up.”

Rock of Gibraltar

On advising

Alex Ferguson

to back down in the legal battle over the horse Rock of Gibraltar with John Magnier and JP McManus, Keane writes: “Somebody I met in Ireland had told me to tell him [Ferguson]: ‘You are not going to win this.’

“I mentioned it to him. And I told him that I didn’t think it was good for the club, the manager in a legal dispute with shareholders.

“I felt I was entitled to say that. He was just a mascot for them. Walking around with this Rock of Gibraltar – ‘Look at me, how big I am’ – and he didn’t even own the bloody thing.”

Landing Ronaldo

On John O’Shea’s unintended role in landing Ronaldo for Manchester United, Keane writes: “We were playing Sporting Lisbon to celebrate the opening of their stadium. I saw how good Ronaldo was that day. He was up against John O’Shea. Sheasy ended up seeing the doctor at half time because he was actually having dizzy spells.

“The club concluded negotiations after the game and we always joked with Sheasy he had actually sealed the deal by playing like a f**king clown. In fairness to him, he was jetlagged (from America) like the rest of us.

“I liked Ronaldo straight away. He had a nice presence about him and a good attitude. After watching him train for a few days I thought: ‘This lad is going to be one of the best players in the world.’

“He was 17, but he was immediately one of the hardest-working players at United. He was good-looking and he knew it. Looking at some of the other players in front of the mirror I would think: ‘You f**king nugget.’ But Ronaldo had an innocence to him and a niceness.”

Other thoughts

On former Sunderland and Ireland player Clive Clarke having a heart attack: “I had the evil thought, ‘I’m glad he had it tonight’, because it would deflect our woeful performance.”

On that tunnel incident with Patrick Vieira: “As I walked to the front I heard something going on at the top of the tunnel. All I could see was a few fingers, pointing at Gary. I lost it. Five seconds earlier I’d been perfectly calm, in the zone, ready for the match.

“I’d thought they might have booted him out on the pitch. But in the tunnel? I just thought: ‘The f**kers’. They were trying to bully him. They were a big team and, in the tunnel, they were even bigger. So I said to myself: ‘Alright, let’s go.’

“If it had come to a fight, Patrick could probably have killed me.”

And on how he and the Arsenal midfielder compared on the pitch: “I could read the game better. My anticipation and touch were better. He was quicker.”

On the time he organised a Christmas party: “Santa had tattoos on his knuckles. Not one of my better moves.”

On his relationship with Wayne Rooney: “The only row we ever had was over a remote control.”

On Moyes

On the more recent crop of United players and David Moyes’s time in charge of them: “I wonder about the current United dressing room. When a manager like Sir Alex Ferguson is replaced, the new man needs a helping hand along the way.

“Does that mean every player should like the new manager or his coaching staff, or love his new sessions and everything about him? No.

“I look at the current players, and they should have been doing a lot better.

“It might be argued that it was up to the manager to motivate them. But not liking a manager, for whatever reason, can never be an excuse for not going out and doing your best.

“Looking at what happened to David Moyes, I have to conclude that he can’t have had a strong dressing room: he had a weak dressing room.

“If some of the players weren’t 100 per cent behind the manager, then they all slackened off. You can have personality clashes, dips in form; you can have injury crises; or the club can be going through a transitional period – but you still go out and do your best.

“I don’t think all of the United players went out and did that. They can’t have because they ended the season so far adrift of the top. I watched them play and I always thought: ‘You can do better’.”

Roy Keane: The Second Half

is published by Orion Publishing Group; orionbooks.co.uk