Sunderland owner appears to confirm Roy Keane rumours: 'It would have been fun'

Roy Keane was rumoured to be very close to a Sunderland return two years ago - and one of the clubs owners appears to have confirmed those rumours were true.

Sunderland owner Juan Sartori has admitted that Roy Keane would have been a ‘fun’ appointment as head coach back in 2022, but also potentially disastrous.

Keane was a big success at Sunderland in what was his first management job, taking the Black Cats from the bottom of the Championship to the title in his first season.

He then backed that up by keeping Sunderland in the Premier League, although an argument with then-owner Ellis Short saw him walk away from the club.

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He was strongly linked with a return in January 2022 when Lee Johnson was sacked, and for a while it appeared he was set for a sensational return. Alex Neil got the job instead and Sunderland were promoted through the play-offs.

Sartori has appeared to have confirmed those stories during the upcoming third series of Sunderland Til I Die, but he doesn’t appear to have had much conviction it would have worked out very well.

“Roy Keane would have been fun," Sartori said. “It definitely would have been good for the Netflix series, but maybe we would have had a third season of disastrous finishes!”

The reason the Keane appointment didn’t happen was mainly due to the way in which the club now operates.

Keane essentially had free-reign at the club when he was manager, but he would have had to have worked under the authority of sporting director Kristjaan Speakman this time around.

Famously distrustful of people within the game he doesn’t know, Keane would have also been restricted in the staff he could bring to the club – something Michael Beale has found too.

Without mentioning Sunderland directly, Keane alluded to that on a recent episode of The Overlap.

"There are a lot of people out of work who are scared to say no to jobs and they will go in under any circumstances, even if the contract is only for a year and there’s no payoff and you can’t bring any staff in," Keane said.

IMAGO / PA Images

"It depends on the club. There are that many managers out there desperate for work, they are desperate for work!

“You can sit down with a club and have all the positive chats. I think I was asked a couple of years ago and I spoke to one or two clubs and a club offered me a job, maybe two years ago. It was all great and it was all positive, good feedback and then they give you an offer and you think nah, I cannot sign that contract. I can’t.

"Thank god that I’m not that desperate that I need to sign it because I go back and I say to people that you need to have a little bit of self-worth." 

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