Maybe. But I'd like it to be because we appointed someone really good. Not just...
Every now and then QPR have appointed the perfect manager:
But usually, not. Venables being the one example of the truly best man. And of course Holloway was THE perfect man for the situation we were in at that time.
Don't think Keane would have fitted in under Briatore/Paladini. And that's the crux. But it would be interesting if we really wanted him and tried for him. And DESPITE That, Keane chose Ipswich.
GuardianKeane can make his surprise comeback a not so surprising successRoy Keane's romantic streak can motivate him to make the most of his return to management at traditional Ipswich
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Roy Keane. Photograph: Mike Egerton/Empics
"Roy's been on the phone to Niall Quinn offering the chairman advice about avoiding relegation, don't think there's any way back for him here though."
That message, from someone "in the know" at Sunderland following last Saturday's 1-0 home win over Hull City, definitely seemed significant but at the time it was hard to fathom exactly how.
Six days on it appears a clear signal that, almost five months after walking out of the Stadium of Light, Keane is going stir crazy and preparing to return to football management.
When the news emerged that he was poised to become Ipswich's new manager it initially felt a bit of a shock, but within minutes the pair seemed an ideal fit. A devoted Brian Clough disciple, Keane is commendably dedicated to precisely the sort of purist pass-and-move football which Ipswich Town are all about. And whereas many players and managers regard history as bunk, it remains vitally important to Keane.
During his time on Wearside he was fully au fait with Sunderland's illustrious - albeit far distant - past, and acutely aware that Clough always regretted not managing the club he once starred for. Indeed Keane rather likes the idea of legacies.
Despite being anything but sentimental he boasts a deeply, if unconventional, romantic streak. Accordingly on more than one occasion the Irishman recounted the tale of being on the Manchester United team bus drawing up outside the Stadium of Light and hearing Sir Alex Ferguson say: "This is a right big club, a proper football club." Tellingly, when sometime later Quinn invited him to manage Sunderland while he was out walking his dog Triggs, Ferguson's words sprang immediately to mind.
After things went wrong on Wearside, he knew he would have to accept a post at a smaller club but it could not just be any old smaller club. A bit of a snob when it comes to tradition, Keane, who got to know Sir Bobby Robson during his time in the north-east, will certainly have picked up on the former England coach's sporadic reflections on Ipswich's glory days under his management.
Despite being one of football's loners, he also knows the benefits of "clubbable" boardrooms. The fact that Ipswich retains a reputation for being one of England's most 'civilised' clubs will prove a big draw for a man whose tenure at Sunderland really began to go wrong when Ellis Short, a hard nosed Irish-American financier, took majority control and started asking him the sort of awkward questions "gentleman" directors would not countenance.
Yet even at enduringly, endearingly "old school" Ipswich, Keane will have to appreciate that the habit adopted late on during his time at Sunderland of commuting to training from his family home in Cheshire once or twice a week by helicopter is simply not on. Instead he needs to copy Robson, buy a home in Suffolk, immerse himself in the job and be at the club all day, every day. If so - and providing his transfer market policy becomes a little more selective - there is no reason why he cannot lead Ipswich into the Premier League the season after next. And in considerable style, too.
If right now the Portman Road players - who can shortly expect to be joined by Jordan Henderson, a promising young Sunderland midfielder and a real favourite of Keane's - have reason to be both apprehensive and excited about his man management style, the local media are in for a treat. Forget Jose Mourinho, Keane's press conferences are the most eloquently entertaining and, above all, controversial anywhere.
Those local journalists should, however, be aware of something he reminded his adoring Wearside audience. "History shows I'm not great at dealing with setbacks," opined Keane almost exactly a year before his departure from Sunderland.
Some who claim to know him suggest he regrets it now. Indeed while his Portman Road appointment seems all but nailed on, one wonders if a tiny part of Roy Keane is hoping against hope for an 11th hour phonecall from Quinn asking him to make a dramatic U-turn and head back north to attend to some unfinished business by the river Wear.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/23/roy-keane-ipswich-sunderland