Television pundits generally have a tic, a momentary comfort blanket response when asked a question before they launch into their opinion.
You’ll find a “Yeah look” here and a double head nod there, an over-exaggerated intake of breath (Jamie Carragher is a good one for this) from some or a quick smile to the host from others.
Roy Keane has no time for tics. The host’s question usually begins with him sporting the face of someone who has been told his local pub has become an upmarket cocktail bar overnight and will now enforce a strict dress code.
It ends with Keane so desperate to release his righteous anger that his studio colleagues can take several minutes off (and woe betide them if they get caught in the crossfire). Keane has become a television pundit child’s toy – pull out the cord and watch him rant.
There used to be a general rule of criticism: never become the story. But in the age of 24-hour news cycles and the desperate fight for clicks that equate to life-sustaining ad revenue, the rules of engagement changed. The action is no longer the only storyline, merely one act within the play.
Pundits like Keane, who pay no heed to politeness, are worth their weight in social media impressions.
Keane has become an unwitting product of that cycle. He is not an actor, one of those pundits determined to have Big Opinions for the sake of notoriety that change their opinions like the wind.
Quite the opposite: He truly believes the things that he says and the only question is whether the anger is the raging, shouty type or the quiet, unsettling form that manages to be more threatening still.
???????? – BOX OFFICE ROY KEANE!
The former Manchester United man is *NOT* happy with Harry Maguire and David de Gea…????pic.twitter.com/AS9fzgieYZ
— Sky Sports (@SkySports) June 19, 2020
Crucially, that anger seems to be cumulative. On Friday evening, with Patrice Evra struggling to stifle a giggle and Kelly Cates presumably a little taken aback by the strength of the conviction, Keane responded to David De Gea’s sloppy mistake by putting himself in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s shoes.
“I would be fining him at half-time, there is no getting away from that. I would be swinging punches at that guy… I wouldn’t even let them [De Gea and Maguire] on the bus after the match. Get a taxi back to Manchester.”
By full-time he had relented a little. Maguire and De Gea would be allowed to sit at the back of the coach. Joke’s on you, Roy; that’s exactly where they would want to sit.
Part of Keane’s deep-rooted frustrations with players must be learned behaviour. He played the majority of his club career under two managers – Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough – who were no strangers to dressing room censure without a coating of sugar, and under them Keane learned to demand the best of himself and his teammates.
His connection with Manchester United left its mark; it is no coincidence that it is players at that club who receive the sharpest edges of his tongue.
But if Keane the televisual hit man is good business for Sky Sports, what of Keane himself? There are three camps into which pundits can be roughly split: 1) The career pundit, who has no aim to get into/back into management and offers insightful criticism and praise, 2) The ex-manager, on to tout themselves for a new job and 3) The loudmouth, who stokes controversy and drives headlines. A successful production relies upon a cycle of all three.
Keane’s problem is that he still sees himself in the second camp, while he edges closer to the third.
He has not been appointed as a first-team manager in 11 years. In the interim, the Sky Sports studio became home.
For all of the entertainment provided by his withering, visceral criticisms, they do Keane’s reputation no favours.
Anger is the last resort of the successful manager, evidence that self-control has been lost. If his punditry provides refreshing, unapologetic honesty, that honesty reveals too much of Keane the manager. It makes him an anachronism.
The problem with castigating players for failing to match up the standards of yesteryear is that it dates as much as it damns them.
In 2008, Keane attacked football punditry as a lazy pursuit. Viewers that were being “brain-washed” were advised not to “listen to any of the experts”.
Having been asked to do some studio punditry for a Champions League match, Keane was adamant in his refusal: “I think I’ve done it once for Sky. Never again. I’d rather go to the dentist.”
Twelve years on, Keane’s savage criticism has become its own appointment television and he is the pundit most likely to create back-page controversy.
Perhaps Keane’s attitudes to the industry changed with experience. Perhaps his anger at perceived underperformance and inattention simply bubbled up so effervescently that he needed an outlet.
Or perhaps he has become exactly the pundit he once purported to hate after failing to become the manager he always wished to be.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3fZ59nB
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