No one is safe from the axe, warns Cats boss Keane

Mar 21 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

ROY Keane is adamant he will always keep his players guessing – as he warned he will never allow anyone to feel safe and secure at Sunderland.

Keane’s decision to axe four members of his first-team squad against Chelsea last weekend shocked many people, both inside and outside of the club, but it was a call the Irishman was happy to make. Although Keane (pictured) has been affable and entertaining in public since he became a manager, he retains a hard and steely edge to his character and refuses to compromise or apologise if he has to upset people to get his own way.

And if the likes of Kieran Richardson, Michael Chopra, Daryl Murphy and Danny Higginbotham have got a problem with what happened to them last weekend, they will not find any sympathy from Keane, who appears to thrive on his unpredictability.

“I’m not sure if what I did last weekend shocked a few people, but we will probably see whether there has been a reaction from the lads over the next few weeks,” said Keane, whose side travel to high-flying Aston Villa tomorrow in desperate need of some points to boost their flagging survival mission. “But I have tended to do that anyway. In terms of last year, for example, certain teams won certain matches. Then I gauge it by what is going on out on the training pitch.

“I have left people out when they have been thinking they’ve done quite well or they might even have scored, but that’s my decision to make. I gauge it from my gut feeling.”

And it is a gut feeling only Keane can explain – not that he feels as though he always has to explain himself – as he calls on the experience he had as a player under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest.

He said: “What I can say is that the tempo has been a lot sharper in training. We’ve just had a training game and the quality was outstanding. We’ve got a lot of quality players and I suppose I like keeping the players on their toes.

“The squad goes up on a Friday. I don’t pull anyone individually when they’re left out. I just put the list up and, put it this way, there are a lot of heads looking at that board. Nobody is walking out without checking the board. You’ve got to check the board. It was the same at Forest. When the team went up on Friday you had to check the team, but everyone is different.

“Sometimes I might pull one or two of the senior players I am leaving out because they maybe deserve to be told. It’s a case of different horses for different courses.” Some managers look to build up a close bond with their players but Keane, who revealed this week that he sometimes only speaks to his squad once a week in training, does not believe that approach suits him.

He explained: “Don’t get me wrong, players come in to see me and I’m quite happy to help players out, but I don’t make a big effort to be down in the dressing room being busy with them and having banter or anything like that. But everyone is different. I never had any banter with any of my managers. And that’s the way I work.”

Nevertheless, despite Keane’s approach, he insisted team spirit was healthy, partly because every player knows they are not immune from criticism. He added: “It’s true enough to say that one of the difficulties is how you keep everyone happy and create a spirit where everyone is desperate to play games. That’s the secret. That’s the balancing act.

“But I don’t care what you do when you leave players out, they are not going to be happy. You can pull them into your office and have a chat with them. You can do anything you want but they are going to be disappointed. And I like the players to be disappointed.

“Players aren’t going to be happy, but I have never been in this business of making people happy. Even as a player. I’m not in it to make people happy.”