Roy Keane will be fined two weeks' wages, £150,000, after a rare retraction from Sir Alex Ferguson last night. The Manchester United manager accepted that his captain was guilty of elbowing Jason McAteer at the Stadium of Light on Saturday, conduct that earned Keane the 11th red card of his unruly career.
Ferguson publicly supported Keane immediately after the match, stating that it was an "innocuous" collision. The manager said that United would lodge an appeal with the Football Association and he accused McAteer of "going down as though he had been shot in the back of the head".
Yesterday, however, Ferguson was forced to withdraw those comments and said that Keane will face internal disciplinary action as well as the automatic three-match suspension from the FA. The ban would be enforced 14 days from the original incident, which means the first game Keane would miss would be Leeds United at Elland Road on Saturday week.
"The replay I was shown directly after the game was misleading," explained Ferguson. "When I saw the pictures on Saturday night from a different angle I saw the referee had no choice but to send him off.
"It was clear that Roy caught him on the side of his head and, as such, we won't be appealing. I still say it was petty rather than grievous and that Roy did not swing his elbow. But I can see he definitely connected with it. Therefore Uriah Rennie had no option but to show a red card."
Ferguson's embarrassment is intensified because it is only six months since the United manager, in a thinly veiled attack on Arsenal and Patrick Vieira in particular, described illegal use of the elbow as "the worst crime in the game". He said then: "It's a coward's way of playing. That sort of thing does not happen here."
But it has now. "I've said recently that use of the elbow is a growing problem in our game," Ferguson said yesterday. "Roy is the first United player to be sent off for an elbowing offence. We have never before had a player at Manchester United who has been sent off for doing that."
Keane's punishment for events in Sunderland will not be announced until the FA reads Rennie's match report. But with the FA expected to announce this week what action they will take over the remarks about Alf Inge Haaland in Keane's recently published autobiography, the player could be looking at a fur ther three matches for bringing the game into disrepute. That could see Keane out of Premiership football until October 26, when Aston Villa, and Steve Staunton, visit Old Trafford.
The Sunderland players were under orders not to speak about Keane but it is known that several had been reading Keane's book in the dressing room before the game.
There is a brief history of turbulence between McAteer and Keane but it was fractious rather than bitter. It was most definitely not physical. But Keane's book has altered many of his previous relationships and all concerned in the publication must now be at the point of regret.
McAteer actually receives two not unfavourable mentions in it, though one of them is factually wrong. There are an increasing amount of inaccuracies being identified by Irish players and Niall Quinn, whose conciliatory gesture as Keane walked off was seen as ill timed by Ferguson, is set to contradict Keane's version of Ireland's training camp in Saipan in his forthcoming book.
But if anything on Saturday, McAteer was bent on ignoring Keane. Neither he nor Quinn spoke to Keane before kick-off and the idea that McAteer deliberately set out to wind up Keane shows a lack of awareness about McAteer's breezy but essentially benign personality.
This is the opposite of Keane's of course, but until the 73rd-minute foul by McAteer on Keane there had been nothing between them. Keane seemed as content as he can be being the best player on the pitch. Then came McAteer's tackle and as one Sunderland player put it: "Jason was fine. He would have just apologised and got on with it but Keane was calling Jason everything under the sun and showed a mouthing action with his hand. Jason told him to put it in his next book and mimed it. Keane just kept saying 'I'll have you'."
Lots of things are said in the course of matches but, if this is what Keane said, he proved true to his word in the aptly titled injury-time.
"The elbow came out of nowhere," said a Sunderland player. "Jason went down and tried to get straight back up - and gestured to the referee not to send Keane off - but the ref had the card out straight away. Some of their lads had a few words but it had nothing to do with Jason. Keane raised his arm, he caught Jason across the face and you just can't do that. I would hardly say it was innocuous."
The ramifications are there for Keane, Ferguson and the FA to consider. The last time he was sent off in the north-east Keane said the thought of retirement seriously crossed his mind. It may have done so again on the long journey home from Wearside.
McAteer, meanwhile, flies to Dublin to join up with the Irish squad. Keane will also be flying to Ireland, but to Cork to sign copies of his book.
· Man of the match: Uriah Rennie
