Keane plans clear-out as he attacks ‘sloppy’ Cats

May 5 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

ROY Keane will begin a major clear-out at Sunderland this week after a dreadful 2-0 defeat at Bolton Wanderers at the weekend provoked him into delivering a damning assessment of his current squad’s abilities.

Keane was in a filthy mood as he left the Reebok Stadium on Saturday night following his side’s 22nd loss of the season and he was vicious in his response to a lacklustre display which he insisted had confirmed some players simply aren’t good enough to stay at the club.

It remains to be seen who those players are, but few will be able to sleep soundly in the coming days as the Irishman prepares his retained list.

Indeed, while Keane will instruct a significant number of them to find another club, he has also insisted he will simply ask chairman Niall Quinn to settle the contracts of those he feels are having a negative impact on the dressing room.

“I thought this would be a big test for us,” said Keane, who had vehemently warned against complacency in his pre-match team-talk. “I wanted to gauge the players to see if they would go into celebration mode and switch off and be sloppy. We were very, very sloppy. I took three players off and I could easily have swapped seven or eight. Does that mean they’re thinking that survival is something to celebrate? If they are, I don’t really want them at this football club.

“There will be changes, trust me. Plenty of changes. This game just confirmed a

few things I’ve been thinking for a while. I could make at least seven or eight changes over the summer, although whether I can do it in terms of getting the right people in remains to be seen.

“I’m not going to sit here and promise that we’ll get 10 or 15 players in, but we need major changes. Sometimes it’s just a matter of quality. It’s not about players not doing their best, it’s just that the quality maybe isn’t there. I can’t defend players that give the ball away when they’re not under pressure.

“We’re not talking non-League here – we’re Sunderland and we’re in the Premier League. If a player is giving the ball away willy-nilly, under no pressure, that drives me crazy. You can defend a lot of other stuff, but giving the ball away so cheaply under no pressure drives me absolutely mental.”

Given the long contracts signed by some Sunderland players when they joined the club, there are those who may feel they will just ride out the storm. But Keane had a clear warning for them as well. He said: “A few of the decisions are quite easy because we have four or five players whose contracts are up. If we decide to move them on, it’s obviously easy enough because we don’t renew their contracts.

“But I don’t have a problem with getting rid of people who have three or four years left either. If players think they have a contract to fall back on, we’ll give them a few bob to go. It’s not a problem. You pay them to come and you pay them to go, it’s simple.

“The good thing about this game is that it has just confirmed what I already knew. Maybe if we had beaten Bolton and won against Arsenal, people would have said, ‘We’re not bad, we finished mid-table’. This just confirms how short we are, and it needs to be sorted.”

Given the stress and strain of a relegation battle, Keane has managed to keep a lid on his infamous temper for much of the campaign, but he no longer has the patience to do that.

He added: “I hope I’ll have some time out. I’m ready for a break now. I’ve had enough today. I’m saying the same things week in, week out and I’m sure people are getting fed up of listening to me. I get fed up myself. You’re always going to lose matches over the course of a season, but I do not think that a total of 22 defeats is acceptable. After 22 defeats this season, I’m lucky to be in a job. We’ve got Arsenal next week so it could end up being 23.

“If someone tells you you’ve lost 23 games in a season, something somewhere must be going wrong. It’s not even like we’ve had a decent cup run either. It’s not good enough and it’s unacceptable. You can’t kid yourself. It’s just as well we’ve had so many late winners. On reflection, we’ve needed them, and some late equalisers as well. I think somebody upstairs has been looking after us this season.”