• Premier League

Keane grateful for heart attack distraction

ESPN staff
October 7, 2014
Roy Keane led Sunderland to the Championship title in 2006-7 © Getty Images
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Roy Keane has admitted to feeling "glad" when one of his players suffered a heart attack during his time as Sunderland manager because it deflected attention away from a bad result on the pitch.

Keane, 43, revealed the moment in his new autobiography, The Second Half, which comes out later this week.

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Roy Keane has settled a few more scores in his new book © Getty Images
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The book also features fresh criticism of several figures from his time at Manchester United, including Sir Alex Ferguson, Carlos Queiroz, Peter Schmeichel, Paul Scholes and other members of the 'Class of '92'.

In the new book Keane tells of how in August 2007, having brought Sunderland up to the Premier League as winners of the Championship the previous season, his team were beaten 3-0 at Luton Town in a League Cup tie on the back of three straight defeats in the top flight.

On the same evening in a match elsewhere, one of his Sunderland players - Clive Clarke - suffered a heart attack while on loan for Leicester against Nottingham Forest, and Keane admits thinking that the timing of the incident helped ease the pressure on him.

"The news came through to us after the game," Keane wrote. "The madness of football: we'd been beaten 3-0 by Luton, a shocking result, but at the press conference after the game I said that football results really didn't matter and I mentioned that Clive Clark had had a heart attack.

"And I had the evil thought 'I'm glad he had it tonight'. Because it would deflect from our woeful performance.

"That was the world I was in."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd
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