Keane and Neville

Keane was a world class footballer and is a very entertaining pundit but as a manager and coach he has been an abject failure.
Reading some of the posts on here I had to keep checking who we were talking about .
 


Keane was a world class footballer and is a very entertaining pundit but as a manager and coach he has been an abject failure.
Reading some of the posts on here I had to keep checking who we were talking about .

An abject failure by achieving promotion in his first season and survival in his second? He basically met and exceeded every objective he'll have been given at this club.

Ipswich didn't go great, but it was by no means a disaster.
 
He had one good season and then got us no more points than MON and Di Canio did. And in getting us promoted got us 6 points fewer than McCarthy.

In the process he started the ball rolling on paying way over the odds for players and tying down average players on massive contracts.
What a bastard, got us promoted but could only manage 6 points fewer than McCarthy! I guess the promotion doesn't count then? We'll have to agree to disagree because I think his contribution to getting our club's pride and self-respect back was enormous, regardless of the points totals or the way it ended.
 
Keane was a world class footballer and is a very entertaining pundit but as a manager and coach he has been an abject failure.
Reading some of the posts on here I had to keep checking who we were talking about .
I must have dreamt him taking over when we were bottom of the championship then taking us up as champions followed by keeping us up in the PL!
 
And as I say in the top flight he was one of our worst managers. 3 points more than Sbragia - someone who is virtually ridiculed on here.

Wank yourselves silly over the bloke if you like, he started spending the money we didn’t have and did no better than any of the managers that followed.

I loved following Sunderland when he was manager, what more is there to be said?
The total opposite of the majority of seasons since.
 
Keane was a world class footballer and is a very entertaining pundit but as a manager and coach he has been an abject failure.
Reading some of the posts on here I had to keep checking who we were talking about .
Tbf he did take over a Championship team who had lost their first four matches of the season after having smashed the lowest ever points total in the premier league. That club then won the championship in his first season.

He left the club as a team capable of surviving in the premier league. To describe that as abject failure is a lot of things, but mainly just wrong.
 
Always thought the criticism of his spending was harsh. Yes, a lot of the players he bought were poor, but we were at our lowest point in 20 years. We had to pay over the odds to attract players otherwise we'd have went down again and another relegation would have finished a lot of fans off.

We got great value out of the players he bought in the Championship, they were instrumental in us going up. And the likes of Richardson, Bardsley and Steed stayed for years and were great servants.

Gordon was a good keeper for us until a freak injury 3 managers later finished him off - an injury that our medical team couldn't even detect but kept him out of the game for nearly 3 years.

We turned down a £20m for Jones only a few weeks after he left yet the £8m we eventually got for him counts towards Bruce's much celebrated net spend despite his value plummetting under him.

Even the duds like Chopra, Diouf and Chimbonda left shortly after Keane for minimal loss, and whilst he definitely overpaid for Ferdinand and McCartney, Ferdinand was a decent defender who was frozen out by Bruce and McCartney looked a good signing at the time but suffered a bad injury and basically played without any nerves in his left foot afterwards. Not sure how you can legislate for that.

Not saying he was great cos he wasn't, he wasted a lot on shit. But I think people look at how much was spent and ignore the context around it.
 

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