Roy Keane stands down as Sunderland manager

Ex-Manchester United captain, Roy Keane (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

After a hundred games in charge, Roy Keane resigns as Sunderland manager.

Following a 4-1 drumming at home to Bolton Wanderers last weekend, and five defeats out of the last six games, Keane’s resignation feels inevitable.

In his 27 months in charge, Keane saw the club promoted from the Championship and saw off relegation from the Premiership last season.

That is no easy feat.

Particularly when you consider that Sunderland was his first managerial job.

At 37, he was the youngest Premiership manager, and heralded as one for the future, and yet London radio station, talkSPORT, were questioning today if he would ever return to management.

Where did it all go wrong?

Given his inspiring and combative performances as a former Manchester United captain, people expected him to transfer this approach to his players when he became manager.

And when Sunderland won the Championship title in 2007, Keane’s winning mentality certainly looked like it was rubbing off.

Run out of ideas

But this season, Keane seems to have run out of ideas.

Highly supportive chairman Niall Quinn invested heavily in the squad in the summer, bringing in experienced, able Premiership players like Steed Malbranque from Tottenham Hotspur and Anton Ferdinand from West Ham.

More of a surprise than Keane’s resignation today, is that ‘Mr Motivator’ hasn’t been able to get more out of his talented squad.

Nyron Nosworthy is a powerful defender that can make life hard for the best of attacking players.

The rather weighty midfielder Andy Reid - often dropped this season – has great passing vision and movement and makes things happen in the midfield.

And Pascal Chimbonda – despite inconsistencies – did put in some impressive performances for Spurs at right-back and I would have thought a disciplinarian like Keane might have able to keep him under control.

Kenwyne Jones

Sunderland’s opening part of the season was undoubtedly hampered by the injury to their brilliant centre forward – Kenwyne Jones.

Certainly Keane’s best purchase as manager from Southampton for 6m, any of the top four would be lucky to have his pace and assists.

Roy Keane is a proud man, and therefore it is unsurprising that he resigned if as he himself said, he felt he’d taken the club as far he could.

Timing wise, a fixture against his old boss Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford this weekend, seemed a good one to miss given the club’s current decline.

Hopefully the pundits are wrong in thinking he might not return to management. His honesty will be missed.

Is there a place for women's football?

England internationals, Karen Carney and Kelly Smith

(Images courtesy of Spencer Jarvis)

Typically provocative, talkSPORT presenter, Adrian Durham, declared the other night on his drivetime show: “men own the game” and argued that the men’s game should remain the priority for investment.

And to a certain extent, Adrian Durham is right.

The money involved in the men's game is staggering. According to the Telegraph, the Premier League currently has a three-year overseas TV deal worth £625m.

Last season, a spokesperson for the Premier League commented before the Arsenal and Manchester United game:

“It is not an exaggeration to say it could be watched by one billion people.”

And indeed, the match was scheduled in order to maximise worldwide viewings.

The 12.45pm kick-off time between the two top English sides, meant it was being broadcasted mid-evening to the football lovers of the Far East, in the morning on the East Coast of America, making it daytime in every region in between.

The game was available to 202 countries, and the feed going into as many as 600 million homes.

Women’s game – still a growing phenomenon

In contrast, when the BBC televised the FA Women’s Cup for the first time in May 2002, the clash between Doncaster Belles and Fulham attracted over 2.5m viewers – the highest viewing figures in the history of televised women’s football in the UK at the time.

Six years on, six times FA Cup winners, Doncaster Belles, are struggling financially and the oldest club in the women’s Premier League nearly closed in September after losing their major sponsor for the past four seasons.

Certainly the financial side of the women’s game is precarious, and supporters argue for the need for greater media attention and higher levels of sponsorship to develop the game.

Adrian Durham’s point that money is better spent on the men’s game than the women’s is limiting, however, and entirely under-estimating the ability and quality of some of the players in the Premier League.

Watching Wigan’s Lee Cattermole or Bolton’s Kevin Nolan week in, week out, does not exactly inspire in contrast to viewing the skill and vision of English internationals, Kelly Smith and Karen Carney.

Kelly Smith and Karen Carney

Arsenal captain, Kelly Smith, played eight years in the highly competitive US league.

Smith was paid the highest complement by former USA head coach April Heinrichs when she asserted that Smith would be an automatic choice for the USA team if she had been eligible.

According to Wikipedia, Vera Pauw, the Dutch coach, called Kelly 'the best player in the World' after she scored a hat-trick against Holland in a World Cup qualifier in 2006.

Smith’s intelligence, movement and finishing perfectly suit her role playing behind the leading striker and linking up play.

She is reminiscent of Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp in her ability to pick a pass and score important goals for club and country.

See below Smith’s two goals against Japan in the World Cup in China last year:





Fellow Arsenal striker, Karen Carney, has a steely sense of gravity not unlike ex-Arsenal Belarusian midfielder Alexander Hleb.

Both players possess great ball control and continually entertain as they dribble through the opposition and set up goals with ease.

Hleb showed his dribbling skills early on when he was playing for Stuttgart in the Bundesliga:





Smith and Carney are just two players among many others – just have a look at FIFA’s shortlist for Women Player of the Year 2008 – that are incredibly talented, entertaining and fully worthy of being watched.