Keane hungry for managerial return
Former Sunderland and Ipswich boss Roy Keane says he is ready to return to football management, despite being unimpressed with the values of modern players.
Keane, 40, has been out of work since being sacked by Ipswich in January after a difficult 20-month spell at Portman Road, but he is champing at the bit to get back into management - as long as it is the "right challenge" for him.
"It has been eight or nine months since I left Ipswich, and its gone pretty quickly," Keane said in an interview with the League Managers Association. "Now I have to say, that if the right challenge came around the corner I would take it.
"I have enjoyed my time off and when you have been in the game with the kind of intensity I have done for the past 20 years, you do need time to re charge your batteries and step back. But now if the right challenge comes up, I'll be ready for it."
Keane earned a reputation for being a no-nonsense footballer who was obsessively dedicated to his profession during a glittering career with Manchester United, eight years of which were spent as Sir Alex Ferguson's captain at Old Trafford.
The Irishman expects the same level of intensity from those playing under him, though he believes the approach that characterised his playing career is increasingly rare in the modern game.
"As a player I led by example, and that came easy to me, I wouldn't ask any player to do anything I wouldn't do," Keane said.
"It's not so easy as a manager. Management is different. You have to have the staff you can trust, and so on, but you also want certain values from your players.
"Unfortunately players don't have the same values they used to, and this is something I have noticed changing over the past 20 years.
"That makes it very hard for a manager to manage. You can put up with mistakes, whether they are on the field or even off it, but you cannot understand, you cannot get your head around players who come into work and are not prepared to roll their sleeves up."
Keane was managed by two British football greats in Ferguson and Brian Clough, and the former United skipper says he is still heavily influenced by the style of the latter - who gave him his break in English football with Nottingham Forest.
"Everybody is different and I've seen if from some different managers over the last 20 years, Brian Clough, Sir Alex and Gordon Strachan, all different in their ways.
"In my experience of Brian Clough in my three years with him, he kept everything simple, he understood what it meant to be a manager, his man-management skills were fantastic, make no mistake about that.
"The game has changed, of course, it has become about sports science, analysis of the opposition, diet, but Brian Clough was a genius and he would have taken all that stuff with a pinch of salt and remembered what the game was about; it's about passing and movement, keeping it simple and a good attitude."
