KEANE NOT INDISPENSIBLE

'Now is the time to debunk the myth that Roy Keane is indispensable to Manchester United. The Faustian pact that Sir Alex Ferguson has signed with the Premiership's most combustible player is putting a great manager and his club on a handcart to hell.

Ferguson needs to jump off - and fast. No longer can his captain's rage and egocentricity be excused on the grounds that United would fall apart without their ungovernable leader. Let's hear no more about 'Keano' being the ultimate team man. Pursuing a violent personal vendetta against an opponent in the 90th minute of a game that is still within United's grasp would serve as a neat definition of self-indulgence.

What we saw at the Stadium of Light on Saturday was one of the game's most gifted players putting his own petty need for revenge above the needs of his team-mates, his manager, the supporters and the dwindling band of apologists who insist on portraying him as a crusader for the truth.

Indignation is fast giving way to sadness in most neutral minds. Here is a potential sporting aristocrat in denial: indulged and sheltered from the winds of truth.Ferguson has faced this conundrum before (in different ways, with Bryan Robson and Eric Cantona, too). His policy was always that only unflinching loyalty to the raging bull who leads his team could preserve United's warrior ethos. But now Keane has become a destructive presence: more trouble than he's worth.'